Commission Regulation (EC) No 2869/95 of 13 December 1995 on the fees payable to the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (Trade Marks and Designs)

COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 2869/95 of 13 December 1995 on the fees payable to the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (Trade Marks and Designs)
THE COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES
,
Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Community,
Having regard to Council Regulation (EC) No 40/94 of 20 December 1993 on the Community trade mark (1), as amended by Regulation (EC) No 3288/94 (2) and in particular Article 139 thereof,
Having regard to Commission Regulation (EC) No 2868/95 of 13 December 1995, implementing Council Regulation (EC) No 40/94 on the Community trade mark (3),
Whereas Article 139 (3) of Regulation (EC) No 40/94 (hereinafter 'the Regulation`) provides that the fees regulations shall be adopted in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 141 of the Regulation;
Whereas Article 139 (1) of the Regulation provides that the fees regulations shall determine in particular the amount of the fees and the ways in which they are to be paid;
Whereas Article 139 (2) of the Regulation provides that the amounts of the fees shall be fixed at such a level as to ensure that the revenue in respect thereof is in principle sufficient for the budget of the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (trade marks and designs) ('the Office`) to be balanced;
Whereas, however, in the Office's start-up phase, balance can be achieved only if there is a subsidy from the general budget of the European Communities, in accordance with Article 134 (3) of the Regulation;
Whereas the basic fee for the application for a Community trade mark shall include the amount which the Office must pay to each central industrial property office of the Member States for each search report provided by such offices in accordance with Article 39 (4) of the Regulation;
Whereas to ensure the necessary flexibility, the President of the Office ('the President`) should be empowered, subject to certain conditions, to lay down the charges which may be payable to the Office in respect of services it may render, the charges for access to the Office's data bank and the making available of the contents of this data bank in machine-readable form, and to set charges for the sale of its publications;
Whereas, in order to facilitate the payment of fees and charges, the President should be empowered to authorize methods of payment which are additional to those explicitly provided for in this Regulation;
Whereas it is appropriate that the fees and charges payable to the Office should be fixed in the same currency unit as is used for the budget of the Office;
Whereas the budget of the Office is fixed in ecus;
Whereas, moreover, the fixing of these amounts in ecus avoids discrepancies that may result from exchange rate variations;
Whereas payments in cash should be made in the currency of the Member State where the Office has its seat;
Whereas the measures envisaged in this Regulation are in accordance with the opinion of the Committee established under Article 141 of the Regulation,