Renewal after expiry of the renewal grace period – can your trademark registration still be saved?

The legal starting point

As a general rule, once the grace period has lapsed without renewal, the registration is removed from the register (or “lapses”), and the proprietor’s registered rights cease. Removal is typically treated as taking effect from the expiry date of the registration term, not from the later date when the office formally records the lapse. This distinction matters because it affects enforcement, licensing, and the ability to rely on the registration in opposition or infringement matters.

That said, “lapse” does not always mean the end of the story. Certain legal mechanisms may, depending on the jurisdiction, allow the proprietor to restore the registration or obtain a substantively similar outcome.

Restoration or re-establishment of rights

Some jurisdictions provide for restoration (sometimes called “re-establishment of rights” or “restitutio in integrum”) where the proprietor can show that the failure to renew was “unintentional”, i.e., due to excusable error. In practice, this requires a clear explanation of what went wrong (e.g., docketing failure, miscommunication with an agent or the client, force majeure-like events). The proprietor will usually need to act promptly once the error is discovered, and additional official fees apply.

Importantly, not all trademark systems offer restoration after the grace period and, where it exists, the threshold is often high. It should therefore be treated as an exceptional remedy rather than a routine safety net.

The situation in Norway

In Norway, expiry of the renewal grace period does not necessarily mean that your trademark registration is “dead”. If the failure to renew within the expiry of the renewal grace period was “unintentional”, you can still renew within two months after the error was discovered but no more than four months after the grace period expired. 

Importantly, this safety valve only applies to national registrations, and not to Norwegian designations under international trademark registrations.

Curiously, the Norwegian Industrial Property Office (NIPO) will treat the registration as lapsed after the grace period has expired, allowing confusingly similar marks to be registered (while it will not before that date). If the registration is restored after expiry of the grace period, it will be up to the owner to enforce its restored rights against younger trademark applications/registrations.

Re-filing as a practical alternative

Where restoration is not available, re-filing a new application for the same mark is often the only route to re-establishing registered protection. This may be straightforward if the mark remains inherently distinctive and no third-party obstacles have arisen in the meantime. However, re-filing comes with material consequences: loss of the original priority/filing date, exposure to intervening rights, and potential vulnerability in enforcement until the new mark is registered.

From a risk perspective, the period between the lapse of the old registration and new filing (or between new filing and registration) may be exploited by third parties, for example by filing applications for identical or confusingly similar marks or objecting to the re-filed application. For portfolios covering multiple jurisdictions, timing and coordination are therefore critical.

Practical next steps

If a registration has expired beyond the grace period, the first step is to confirm (i) the formal status in the relevant register, (ii) whether any restoration mechanism exists in that jurisdiction, and (iii) the applicable time limits and evidentiary requirements. In parallel, it is prudent to assess whether re-filing should be done immediately as a protective measure, even while exploring restoration (where permitted), and to conduct a targeted clearance check to identify intervening filings.