PREFACE

        A diplomatic conference, to which all the countries members of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property were invited and which was held in Locarno (Switzerland), adopted, on October 8, 1968, the Locarno Agreement Establishing an International Classification for Industrial Designs (hereinafter referred to as "the Locarno Agreement" and "the Locarno Classification," respectively). The text of the Locarno Agreement is reprinted in this Volume.

        The Locarno Classification comprises:

        The original list of classes and subclasses was attached to the Locarno Agreement when it was adopted.

        The Locarno Agreement set up a Committee of Experts, in which each country party to the Locarno Agreement is represented, and the Agreement empowered the Committee to make "amendments" in or "additions" to the original list of classes and subclasses. It entrusted the Committee to establish the alphabetical list and the explanatory notes (which were not established in the diplomatic conference), and it empowered the Committee to amend and supplement (make additions to) each and any of the three parts (list of classes and subclasses, alphabetical list of goods, explanatory notes) of the Locarno Classification.

        The Locarno Classification has been revised several times by the Committee of Experts. The present (seventh) edition of the Locarno Classification incorporates all the revisions made in and before February 1998. This edition will enter into force on January 1, 1999, and will replace the previous one.

        In this most recent edition, the list of classes and the list of classes and subclasses consist of 32 classes and 223 subclasses. The alphabetical list of goods, which contains 6,600 entries, is presented in two parts: the first part lists all the goods in a single alphabetical list, irrespective of the class to which each of them belongs; the second part lists, separately for each subclass, in alphabetical order, the goods that belong to that subclass. The explanatory notes are incorporated in the list of classes and subclasses.

        The Locarno Classification is "solely of an administrative character" and does not bind the contracting countries "as regards the nature and protection afforded to the [industrial] design [classified in a certain manner]" (Locarno Agreement, Article 2(1)). The Locarno Agreement requires the industrial property office of each contracting country to "include in the official documents for the deposit or registration of [industrial] designs, and, if they are officially published, in the publications in question, the numbers of the classes and subclasses of the Locarno Classification into which the goods incorporating the [industrial] designs belong" (Article 2(3)). Recommendations of the Committee of Experts deal with the manner in which the classes and subclasses should be indicated in the said documents and publications. These recommendations are published in this publication.

        On October 1, 1998, the following 35 countries were party to the Locarno Agreement: Austria, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, China, Croatia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Guinea, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Kyrgyzistan, Malawi, Netherlands, Norway, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Yugoslavia.

        The International Bureau of the World Intellectual Property Organization (Geneva) and the Benelux Designs Office (The Hague) also use the Locarno Classification in their registers and in the publications they issue under the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Deposit of Industrial Designs and the Benelux Designs Convention, respectively.

        The seventh edition of the Locarno Classification was published in English and French in November 1998. Official texts of the same will be established in other languages as provided for in Article 1(7)(b) of the Locarno Agreement.

        The English and French versions of this (seventh) edition of the Locarno Classification may be ordered from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), 34, chemin des Colombettes, 1211 Geneva 20 (Switzerland), at the price of 100 Swiss francs per language version.

Geneva, November 1998