| Summary: | The creation of the Community trademark (CTM) in 1993 was a true revolution in legal and economic terms. Given the supranational legal nature of this newly created trademark, it had to be followed by the establishment of a new agency of the European Union: the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM). Notwithstanding the fact that the EU has a remarkable network of various bodies, offices and other entities, the legal status of the newly created Office is not easily comparable with the majority of other agencies at the European level. The international success of the CTM, as well as the legal originality and the economic importance of the OHIM justify the study of its normative and organizational specificities. To this end, this paper will first focus on the legal basis and the practical consequences of Office's institutional position (Chapter 1 - OHIM as an autonomous institutional structure), before entering, in a second stage, in some legal aspects of its internal organization (Chapter 2 - Competencies of the OHIM's bodies).
|
|---|
