Saudi Arabia - Trade Mark Office moves to soft copy registration certificates

It is the end of an era. A welcome end but one that should be marked suitably by nostalgic practitioners everywhere.  

Following the news here that the Saudi Trade Mark Office is moving to soft copy registration certificates, the first of the new soft copy registration certificates have started to appear.  This marks the beginning of the end for those of us who love trying to find a decades old original registration certificate, frayed and worn thin by passage over the years through many hands and endorsed, in some semblance of order, with all manner of renewals, changes of name, address and so on. These new soft copy only pdf certificates bear one of the new scannable 2-D pixel based barcodes which allows verification on the Ministry of Commerce and Industry website. Useful.

The Trade Mark Office have not yet decided how to deal with those endorsements which have previously been added to the original certificates. This part of the Empty Quarter expects they will follow the logical path of issuing a new certificate after each change. More new when it is available.