Wipo Lisbon Agreement Contracting Parties

The Lisbon Agreement is a special agreement within the meaning of Article 19 of the Paris Convention on the Protection of Industrial Property. Any country contracting the convention can join the convention. Countries that comply with the Lisbon Agreement (1967) will become members of the Lisbon European Union Assembly. The list of countries parties to the Lisbon agreement indicates that all contracting parties, with the exception of one party in the European Union Assembly, are in Lisbon. The Lisbon Union Assembly has the power to amend the regulations. In addition, if no declaration of refusal is made, but the effects of an international registration in a contracting country are subsequently invalidated and the cancellation can no longer be challenged, the competent authority of the country concerned must inform the International Office. Following such notification, the International Office registers the cancellation in the International Register and sends a copy of the notification to the relevant authority of the country of origin. Refusals are not necessarily set in stone. If a contracting country that has refused to withdraw the declaration of refusal at a later date, the Lisbon system provides for a procedure for registering such withdrawals in the international register. It should also be mentioned that the protection provided under the Lisbon Agreement does not exclude protection that might already exist in a Member State under other international treaties, such as the Paris Convention, the Madrid Convention on the Suppression of False or Misleading Claims on the Origin of Goods or the Agreement on Commercial Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). , on the basis of bilateral or regional agreements or under national legislation or judicial decision. A brief description of registration procedures is shown in Appendix II. Subject to refusal or cancellation (see below), an internationally registered designation of origin must be protected from the date of international registration in any contracting country that has not issued a refusal.

However, a contracting country may declare that protection is provided in that country from a different date, which cannot be after the expiry date of the one-year refusal period. The Lisbon system provides for an international registration system for appellations of origin and geographical indications as part of a single procedure with WIPO. The holder of a national or regional designation or geographical indication may obtain the protection of the distinctive sign in the other parts of the Lisbon system through a uniform registration procedure and a minimum charge. Since January 1, 2010, a contracting country has the ability to implicitly adopt on its territory the protection of a specified designation of origin registered under the agreement, instead of implicitly making a declaration. These declarations are not mandatory, but can be made by a Lisbon Member State in two situations: Article 2, paragraph 1 of the Lisbon Agreement defines a “name of origin” as “the geographical name of a country, region or place used to designate a product originating in that country whose quality or characteristics are exclusively or essentially attributable to the geographical environment.”