DOHA - The Qatari Trademark Registrar, Ahmed Al Juffairi, announced that the Trademark Office started on March 27, 2007, a new practice to speed up the prosecution of trademark applications.
Under the directives of the Qatari Ministry of Economy and Commerce’s Secretary, Abdullah Al Qahtani, the time frame needed for completing the registration of a trademark is now minimized allowing all pending trademark applications to be processed into registration in a short period of time.
For this purpose, the Trademark Office has extended its working hours in order to accelerate the processing of all pending trademark applications.
As a result of this new procedure, all pending trademark applications (around 10,000) are expected to be examined within 6 to 8 months. In addition, all the newly filed trademark applications will be processed within a time frame of 8-12 months, instead of 3-5 years as the case was previously.