Glossary
French: opposition EUIPO
An EUIPO opposition is filed at the EUIPO against an application for a European Union trademark. It must be filed within three months of publication of the EU application (or of the international registration designating the EU). The deadline is not extendable — a key difference from TTAB practice with its extensions of time to oppose.
The official opposition fee is €320. The opposition can be based on an earlier mark — a national mark covering any EU country or an EU mark (formerly “Community trade mark”) — and several earlier rights can be invoked without increasing the fee, unlike the per-ground fee structure at the French INPI, where each additional ground adds to the cost. Rights other than trademarks, such as a company name, can also be invoked, provided their scope is not merely local.
The procedure begins with a two-month “cooling-off” period in which nothing happens, designed to allow amicable settlement — often via a coexistence agreement — and which can be extended, in practice up to roughly 24 months in total if both parties agree: a striking amount of built-in negotiating time compared to US practice. The opponent then has two months to complete its opposition, and the applicant two months to respond. Once the adversarial phase closes, the EUIPO takes roughly three to four months to issue a decision. Total duration: about twelve months on average, absent cooling-off extension or suspension.
Remember the leverage: because the EUTM is unitary, one earlier national right can defeat the entire EU application (subject to conversion).
TTAB opposition proceedings can run considerably longer once discovery, testimony periods and briefing are factored in, and extensions of time to oppose are common and routinely granted before the opposition is even filed. The EUIPO system trades that front-end flexibility for speed and cost-predictability: the three-month deadline is fixed and final, the written procedure is comparatively lean, and the mandatory cooling-off period front-loads the settlement conversation instead of leaving it to happen informally, if at all, during discovery. A US company used to TTAB timelines should expect the EUIPO clock to move faster at the outset — no extension of time to oppose — but potentially run just as long overall once cooling-off extensions are added at the back end.
A US company that learns, two months after its EU application was published, that a French competitor has filed an opposition based on an earlier German national mark should not assume the dispute is confined to Germany: because the EUTM is a single, unitary right, a successful opposition based on that one earlier German mark would block registration across the entire European Union, not just Germany — though the applicant could then convert the rejected application into national applications in the other EU countries, keeping the original filing date.
Full procedure and strategy: trademark opposition before the EUIPO. This deadline is also the reason a trademark watch covering EU filings matters as much as one covering French filings, and the reasoning above overlaps closely with INPI opposition for the national-level equivalent. See also coexistence agreement and likelihood of confusion.