Respond to Ground for refusal under Article 6 (1)

If an examiner considers that the scope of the indication of goods and services is considered to be too vague, the examiner would issue a ground for refusal under Article 6 (1).

The examiners provide the holder with its proposal at paragraph V in the notification of provisional refusal.

If the holders amend the designated goods or services like that, the ground would be resolved.

Underlined parts in the proposal are limited goods or services.  The holder might accept the proposal immediately.

However, please check all of the proposed designated goods and services.

Examiners sometimes delete some designated goods and services at its proposal; however, they do not usually mention the deletions.

As the result, the designated goods and services might be limited more than expected.

Thus, we need to compare the examiner’s proposal to the original designated goods and services.

If the holders won’t like to accept the examiner’s proposal, they should talk to Japanese Patent attorneys about that.  Because it is difficult for foreigners to amend the designated goods and services according to Examination Standards for Similarity of Goods or Services.