This allows the examination of a Singapore trade mark application to be accelerated so you will find out if your application faces any problems, or that it can be published for opposition purposes, within three to six weeks of filing your application.

This is substantially quicker than an application that undergoes 'regular' examination.

Requests for accelerated examination must be made upon filing and can be made against any national Singapore trade mark application (there is no need to have a related patent application per a previous programme). It is not available for Certification or Collective marks and cannot be made against a designation of Singapore in an International Registration.

Consideration should therefore be made to filing in Singapore nationally over an International Registration if speed is of the essence. Singapore is the gateway to South East Asia and an important market for businesses in diverse industries such as electronics, chemicals, medicines, financial services and communications.

On the flip side, if you're a Singapore business looking to make use of the International system to expand your protection abroad, you may want to request accelerated examination of your base first filing Singapore application and then, presuming it gets a clean bill of health at examination, then file your International application claiming priority.

Fees for accelerated examination are applied on a per class basis. Singapore's official fees are not applied on a sliding scale; it's the same fee per class. Therefore, if it is only a certain class or classes that need expediting, you could file separate applications, one to be accelerated and one to undergo the regular course.

This is a welcome change to Singaporean trade mark practice but careful thought should be made to filing strategy. Naturally, Stobbs are on hand to build the best filing strategies.