Office action
If we find obstacles to the registration of your trademark in the examination, or your application involves deficiencies, we will inform you about them by sending you an office action. In general, we send no more than one office action. A second office action is issued only if it is expected to provide additional information that is essential for making a decision in the case.
We send office actions by email. Reply to our email to let us know that you have received it.
What is a formal office action?
You will receive a formal office action from us before the actual examination of the mark if your application involves a formal deficiency, such as an erroneous classification. The formal office action contains a request that you correct the deficiencies. Once you have done that, we can continue the examination.
When should I respond to an office action?
It is very important that you respond to the office action by the deadline. If we do not receive your response by the deadline stated in the office action, your application will be dismissed. This means the processing will end either for the entire application or for the parts that include obstacles.
The time limit for responding to office actions is 2 months.
Deadline extension
We can extend the response time for you if you submit a request in writing within the given time limit. You must also pay an extension fee.
See our price list and payment instructions.
You can get the first extension without proper explanations. To get further extensions you must provide a specific explanation, such as ongoing negotiations to get the consent of the owner of an earlier trademark.
If you have already responded to the office action, we cannot grant you an extension anymore.
We grant a summer extension without any explanations to all office actions with a deadline between 1 June and 31 August. You may therefore be granted more than one summer extension.
Request for suspension
In your response, you can ask us to suspend the processing of your application if an obstacle has not yet been registered or a procedure relates to the obstacle making it conditionally protected. Such reasons may include a revocation or invalidation procedure started by the applicant, an opposition against the trademark, or that an earlier mark is still at the application stage.
How should I respond to an office action?
File your response to an office action in writing, using our online service available in Finnish Open link in a new tab and in SwedishOpen link in a new tab. Study first our examples of how to respond to office actions and how to overcome the obstacles reported in them.
See examples of how to overcome obstacles and how to respond to office actions.
Decision about dismissal of application
If you fail to submit your response to an office action by the deadline, the processing will end and the application will be dismissed.
We will issue a decision on the dismissal. You can lodge an appeal against the decision with the Finnish Market Court if you as an applicant think that the dismissal decision is wrong or that it should not have been issued. We send appeal instructions together with the decision.
The application can be dismissed either in full or in part if the deficiencies or registration obstacles only affect a part of the application. If a dismissal decision concerns the application only in part, the mark can be registered after the appeal period to the extent that there is no obstacle to registration.
Reinstatement of a dismissed application
If your application has been dismissed, you can request that we continue to process the application. File your reinstatement request by the deadline given in our dismissal decision, in other words within two months of the expiry of the office action deadline.
In connection with the reinstatement request, file your response to our office action or give some other report. At the same time, you must pay a reinstatement fee.
See our price list and payment instructions.
In part or in full?
An office action or a dismissal or rejection decision may apply to all goods and services for a mark or only to some of them.
If the obstacle to registration applies to all of the goods and services, the mark is not registered at all.
If the obstacle only applies to some of the goods and services, the mark is registered at the end of the registration process for the goods and services the obstacle does not apply to.
Decision about dismissal of application (if the application was filed before 1 May 2019)
If your application became pending before the new Finnish Trademarks Act entered into force on 1 May 2019, we process the application in compliance with the old Act that was in force on the application date.
Under the old Act, your application will be dismissed, in other words the processing will end entirely, if you fail to submit your response by the deadline given in the office action. This means that – even if the proposed trademark could have been registrable in part – it will not be registered, and instead the entire application will be left unprocessed.
After this we will process the trademark again only if you file a new application and pay a new application fee. In such a case you can ask us to accelerate the processing.
In respect of trademark applications that were filed before 1 May 2019, you can lodge an appeal against the dismissal decision with the Finnish Market Court if you think that the dismissal decision is wrong or that it should not have been issued. We send appeal instructions together with the decision.