Croatia and Hrvatska Trademark Information

Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is located in Central Europe on the Adriatic Sea. Croatia is bordered by Slovenia in the north, Hungary in the northeast, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro in the southeast, and Serbia in the east. The estimated population is 4,490,000 with a GDP of $78.54 billion.

The lands that today comprise Croatia were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the close of World War I. In 1918, the Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes formed a kingdom known after 1929 as Yugoslavia. Following World War II, Yugoslavia became a federal independent Communist state under the strong hand of Marshal TITO. Although Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, it took four years of sporadic, but often bitter, fighting before occupying Serb armies were mostly cleared from Croatian lands. Under UN supervision, the last Serb-held enclave in eastern Slavonia was returned to Croatia in 1998. In April 2009, Croatia joined NATO; it is a candidate for eventual EU accession.

Trademarks are assigned by the State Intellectual Property Office of the Republic of Croatia. Croatia is a member of the Madrid Protocol. A trademark is valid for 10 years and may be renewed an indefinite number of times, for a period of 10 years each.

The following shall not be registered:

• signs, which may not be protected as trademarks in accordance with the requirements set out in Article 2 of this Act,
• signs, which are devoid of distinctive character in relation to the goods or services for which registration is requested,
• signs which consist exclusively of signs or indications which may serve, in trade, to designate the kind, quality, quantity, intended purpose, value, geographical origin, or the time of production of the goods or of providing of the service, or to designate other characteristics of the goods or services,
• signs which consist exclusively of signs or indications which have become customary in the everyday language or in good faith and the established practices of trade,
• signs which consist exclusively of the shape which results from the nature of the goods as such, or the shape of goods which is necessary to obtain a technical result, or the shape which gives substantial value to the goods,
• signs, which are contrary to public policy or to accepted principles of morality