Restoration: Why Do We Care?

Introduction

Registered forms of Intellectual Property are typically associated with a variety of deadlines, both before and after registration. Missing any of these may have catastrophic results for the registration. Many systems therefore have a restoration procedure that may mitigate these effects, subject to certain conditions. In a great number of systems the most important condition is that an appropriate level of care was taken to observe the original deadline, an assessment of so-called "due care".

It is therefore important to ensure that appropriate care is taken in relation to the multitude of deadlines associated with any Intellectual Property portfolio, firstly in order to minimise the risk of any of those deadlines being missed and secondly in order to improve the chances of recovering any rights that are lost as a result of the deadlines being missed. Accordingly, an understanding of restoration requirements is useful for determining the appropriate