OHIM have recently detected a number of payments that have been debited wrongly from user accounts. These concern mostly trade mark applications that had been previously withdrawn or were debited twice. In the coming days, the Office will be individually contacting the users whose applications are eligible for reimbursement.
These debits were discovered independently by the Office during checks that were being carried out as part of the introduction of some improvements to the integration of our different production and accountancy systems. In total there are 868 applications affected for the period 1996-2014. After careful analysis, around 50% of these applications can still be reimbursed in compliance with the four-year maximum time-limit established in Article 84 of the Community Trade Mark Regulation.
Consequently, OHIM have made arrangements for the refunding of the amounts to 213 users who are within the relevant time-limit set out in the Regulation. They will be contacted individually, as from June 11, to inform them about the applications concerned and we will proceed with the corresponding payment.
OHIM have already established additional controls to prevent any reimbursements from withdrawn applications remaining unprocessed.
OHIM apologise to all those involved for the inconvenience this oversight may cause. OHIM Information Centre remains at all users' disposal for further information.