Trademark registration in Saint Lucia. Saint Lucia is an island country in the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean Sea on the boundary with the Atlantic Ocean. An educated workforce and improvements in roads, communications, water supply, sewerage, and port facilities have attracted foreign investment in tourism and in petroleum storage and transshipment in this country. From then, Saint Lucia has been able to attract foreign business and investment, especially in its offshore banking and tourism industries, which is St. Lucia’s main source of revenue. Accordingly, many businesses want to enter this market and one of the most important preparations a business needs to take before expanding to this country is to learn the procedure of trademark registration in Saint Lucia.
Trademark in Saint Lucia
The mark doesn’t need to be in use in St. Lucia at the time of application for it to register. However, once registered, the trademark must not go unused for three years, or else it will become vulnerable to cancellation actions.
Nonetheless, it should be noted that for some special circumstances, the trademark rights might be established without registration.
For example, a famous trademark in the world can be protected in St. Lucia even if its owner doesn’t register for trademark protection in this country.
However, when the trademark owner wants to pursue an infringement action in Saint Lucia, he/she will need to prove that the famous trademark is known to the Saint Lucia public and that there was an intention to deceive, confuse, or take advantages by using the infringing trademark for identical or similar goods, along with other reasons.
Necessary documents for trademark registration in Saint Lucia
Necessary documents for trademark registration in St. Lucia include:
- Power of attorney (POA);
- Detailed description of the mark;
- Detailed information of the applicant;
- Trademark model;
- List of goods and services according to the Nice Classification;
- Priority documents (If any);
- Other necessary documents.
The procedure of trademark registration in Saint Lucia
To obtain trademark protection in St. Lucia, the applicant needs to file their trademark application to the Registry of Companies and Intellectual Property of Saint Lucia (ROCIP).
If there are no errors detected in the trademark application, it will be published in the Official Gazette.
After the publication of the trademark application, any third parties who want to file for opposition of the registration will have 3 months to do so.
To do that, the opposing party must file a notice of opposition with the Registrar within 3 months from the day on which the acceptance of the application is published in the Official Gazette.
The validity period
If there are no oppositions or the winning party in the opposition action is the applicant, he/she will get his/her trademark registered and receive a trademark registration certificate.
A trademark in Saint Lucia will have a validity period of 10 years from and including the filing date of the application or the priority date. Every 10 years, the trademark owner may file for renewal of the trademark.
If the trademark owner misses the deadline to file for renewal, St. Lucia provides for a grace period in which the trademark owner may file for their trademark renewal upon payment of late renewal fees.
You can see a list of Saint Lucia IP firms here.