rose to move, That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Trade Marks (Relative Grounds) Order 2007.

The noble Lord said: The order will change the procedures for registering trade marks in the UK to make them fairer. The proposed change is both deregulatory and harmonises the procedures for registering national trade marks with those that business encounters when registering Community trade marks.

The order has been subject to extensive consultation with rights holders, prospective rights holders, legal professionals and their representative bodies. The Intellectual Property Office first engaged its users through a pre-consultation exercise to find out what they regarded as the strengths and weaknesses of the current system of registration. It then formally consulted about what the future examination policy should be. Finally, it consulted again about the form of the order before the Committee. Around 70 per cent of those who responded about the examination policy felt that a move to some form of “search and notify” opposition regime was necessary. That level of support represents not only the professional legal opinion of the trade mark world; the same level of support came direct from the small and medium-sized enterprises that responded.

In the trade mark registration regime currently operated by the Intellectual Property Office, the balance is skewed significantly towards the protection of earlier trade marks. That means that earlier trade marks are protected automatically, regardless of whether their owner has any concern about a prospective new trade mark registration and regardless of whether the earlier mark itself continues to qualify for protection by virtue of its genuine use. At the same time, new applications face an increasingly difficult time in achieving national registration due to the number of blocking registrations they face and the time and cost involved in overcoming them. A majority of those blocking registrations are Community trade marks, which, because of different registration procedures at the Community trade mark office, have not been vetted to see whether they conflict with earlier national marks or with earlier Community marks.

That is resulting in some whose business is solely conducted in the UK, and for whom the most appropriate protection therefore lies in obtaining a national trade mark, seeking instead to register their trade marks as Community trade marks simply to avoid the effects of the national registration procedure. That costs more and runs the risk of unnecessarily embroiling the trade mark owner in litigation elsewhere in Europe. If nothing is done, the problem will only worsen.

In the Government’s view, the solution is to adopt a system whereby it is left to the owners of any earlier marks or rights to object to new national trade marks. After all, it is the owner of the mark who is best placed to judge whether a new trade mark is likely to affect his intellectual property. Furthermore, it is the owner of the mark who is best placed to show that it meets any use conditions imposed by the law. There is a powerful argument that the owner of the mark has most responsibility for acting to protect his own property.

The order will introduce such a system. The Committee will note, however, that the order provides that the registrar may continue to conduct a search of the relevant registers for the purposes of notifying persons about the existence of relevant earlier trade marks. The search results will be sent to applicants for new trade marks so that they can assess for themselves the risk of successful opposition and decide whether to proceed. If the application proceeds, the owners of earlier marks who appear to have an interest will also be notified.

The office has worked with interested parties, including the Institute of Trade Mark Attorneys and the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys to ensure that the order before the Committee is workable and equitable to all parties. I therefore commend the order to the Committee and I beg to move.

Moved, That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Trade Marks (Relative Grounds) Order 2007. 17th Report from the Statutory Instruments Committee.—(Lord Evans of Temple Guiting.)

As we have heard, Section 5 of the Trade Marks Act states that a trade mark shall not be registered if it is identical or similar to an earlier trade mark. The order provides that the registrar will no longer refuse to register a trade mark on relative grounds unless the proprietor of the earlier trade mark or other earlier right objects on any such ground in opposition proceedings.

I would like to make two points and ask a question at the end. The change represents a significant new burden for mark holders. They will be the ones on whom the onus lies to check and ensure that entries on the register will not conflict with their existing property. Small businesses could face an unfair and disproportionate burden compared with their larger competitors, especially if they have to monitor not only this country's register, but that of every nation. Can the Minister give me some clarification on that?

Having listened to the presentation by the Minister, this seems to be a very sensible amendment to existing law. I have only one question. At the end of his remarks, he touched on the consultation that had taken place with various organisations. It would be useful if he could elaborate on whether there was any wider consultation on the proposals.

We do not believe that any additional burden on existing national trade mark owners will be as great as the burden that we are now removing from businesses who want to register new national trade marks. There are a number of reasons for that. First, registration of a new trade mark does not extinguish the legal rights of the owner of a conflicting earlier trade mark to cancel registration and prevent the use of the later trade mark. Consequently, a national business does not have to oppose every apparently conflicting later trade mark. As I said, the order provides that the registrar may continue to conduct a search of relevant registers for the purpose of notifying persons about the existence of relevant earlier trade marks.

Secondly, most oppositions, which must be filed at the UK IPO, are resolved through negotiation between the parties or by one side or the other backing down before significant costs are incurred, so we are pretty sure that there will not be the burden about which the noble Baroness is concerned.

On the question of consultation, I mentioned in my speech that the consultation was extensive. It was placed on the UK IPO website and was accessed by about 2,000 individual users. About 40 hard copies were also issued to groups and organisations with an interest in this area. Press releases were issued to highlight the consultation to a wide audience. To engage small and medium-sized businesses, a summary of the consultation was sent to more than 500 individual businesses which had approached the UK IPO for information about protecting trade marks. The consultation was also highlighted on the websites of the Intellectual Property Office and the Small Business Service. I mentioned earlier the considerable number of organisations that we consulted before the order was finally drafted.

On Question, Motion agreed to.