Conversion of an application: stages and deadlines

Conversion turns a European Union trade mark application, or an international registration designating the EU, into a set of national applications in the member states you choose. It becomes relevant once the EU-wide route fails, is withdrawn, or stops covering your target market. The procedure itself is administrative: the receiving offices reformat the filing, they do not re-examine the mark on its merits.

When conversion becomes relevant

The most common trigger is a refusal at the EU level that would not apply in every member state — a conflict with an earlier national mark in one country, for instance, while the sign remains registrable elsewhere. A second trigger is withdrawal of the EU application by the applicant, often for cost or strategy reasons rather than a substantive problem. A third is the underlying international registration ceasing to have effect, which removes the EU designation that the conversion request depended on.

Conversion does not create a new right. It preserves the original filing date in each state you select, provided the request is made correctly and on time. Missing the window closes this option permanently for that application.

How the procedure runs

Each national office runs its own timeline from the point it receives the forwarded file. A delay at one office has no effect on the others, which is why applicants sometimes see registration dates spread across a year or more for the same original mark.

Documents you need to prepare

The request itself must state the states chosen and the grounds for conversion. You will also need the original filing details, including priority or seniority claims attached to the EU application, a translation of the goods and services list into the language required by each named state, and proof that the applicable fee has been paid. Missing a translation is the most frequent reason a national office issues a deficiency letter rather than proceeding directly.

A comparable document-driven deadline appears in Service credit calculation, where the completeness of the initial file also decides how quickly the matter moves forward.

Who decides and how long it takes

The office that first received the EU application checks the conversion request for form. Substance is then decided separately by each national office, using its own examination practice and its own fee schedule. There is no single decision maker for a conversion — there are as many as there are states named in the request.

Timing has two layers. The window to file the conversion request runs from the event that triggered it, and the office publishes that period in the file record rather than in a fixed public table. Once the request passes to a national office, that office's ordinary examination timeline applies, the same one it would use for a domestic filing.

A related pattern of parallel filings and priority questions is discussed in The same invention is granted to someone else patent, which turns on a comparable question of who acted first and where.

Common scenarios

If the EU application was refused only in one member state on relative grounds, conversion into the other states usually proceeds cleanly, since the objection does not travel with the file. If the EU application was withdrawn before any office objection, conversion is still available, but the deadline runs from the withdrawal date rather than from a refusal decision. If the underlying international registration lapsed entirely, conversion is only available for the states it validly designated at the time it ceased to have effect.

A structurally similar fork — where a later administrative step depends on an earlier filing event — is set out in Post-issue reporting token issuance what the decision maker looks.

Sources and limits

This page describes the sequence of a conversion request and the roles of the offices involved. It does not set out the substantive examination criteria each national office applies once the file reaches it, and it does not cover appeal routes against a national refusal — those follow the ordinary domestic procedure of the state in question. This overview reflects publicly available procedural guidance from the relevant intellectual property offices, reviewed as of the current publication date.

For a structured view of what a factual record can and cannot establish once a dispute moves beyond registration, see Asset in Isle of Man in detail.

FAQ

How long does conversion take once the request is filed?

There is no single figure. The formal check at the office of first receipt is short; the substantive stage then runs on each national office's ordinary timeline, which varies by state and by workload.

What documents do we need to start the request?

You need the conversion request naming the chosen states, the original priority and seniority data, a translation of the goods and services list, and proof of the fee payment for each named state.

What happens if the other side stays silent during the process?

Conversion itself has no opposing party at the request stage. If a national examination later raises a third-party objection, that office's own procedure for a non-responding party applies, not the conversion mechanism.

Related publications

How seniority and priority claims trade mark runs in covers a closely related timing question, since seniority and priority data travel with the file into every converted national application.

Next step

If a competitor's filing has already appeared next to your product and you are weighing whether conversion protects your position, What to do first in this situation explained sets out the first moves.

If a standard body has raised a claim against your filing and you need to sequence your response, What to do first in this situation in detail walks through the order of steps.

If a distributor has already registered your brand locally and conversion is one option among several, When a distributor registered your brand locally in practice lays out what is involved in being heard.

— Ruta Kavaliauskaite, AURELIS