Two countries next door to each other changed the same rule in the same month. Czechia went silent. Slovakia left one small warning alive. If you own a Slovak mark and still assume the office is guarding it, that difference is worth ten minutes.
Here's what actually happened. On 1 January 2019 the Czech office stopped refusing applications that copied an earlier registered mark. On 14 January 2019 Slovakia did the same. Both were catching up with Directive (EU) 2015/2436. Both scrapped the old automatic refusal, which in Slovakia sat in section 6 of Act No. 506/2009 Coll.
But Slovakia didn't leave an empty space. It put something small in the gap.
The one letter Slovakia still sends
Under the amended act, in the new section 28(3), the Slovak office still has a duty to point out a conflict before publication. It applies in exactly one situation. The sign applied for is identical to an earlier mark of somebody else, and the goods or services are identical too. That's it.
Lawyers call it double identity. Same word, same class, same problem.
So if someone files a word for word copy of your registered Slovak mark in the classes you actually filed in, the office has to flag it before it goes out. You're not left completely in the dark.
Now the second half of that sentence. If the sign is merely similar, nobody flags it. A letter swapped. A letter doubled. The same word in a different alphabet. Your logo redrawn by hand. Your name in the next class over. Your name with a prefix bolted on the front. None of that is identical, so none of it triggers the letter. And the office doesn't compare similarity any more at all, because that part of the law was removed.
Czechia went further. It repealed section 6 and left nothing in its place. Its own 2019 annual report says plainly that it no longer determines ex officio whether the mark applied for is identical with an older one. Then it adds a line worth reading twice. Cases of so called double identity are rare.
That line is the whole problem. The one narrow case Slovakia still reports is the rare one. The everyday case, the lookalike that quietly eats your search results for years, is the one that arrives in silence.
The clock didn't move
The notification isn't an opposition and it doesn't replace one. It's a heads up. Acting on it is your job.
Publication in the vestnik opens three months to oppose, section 30(1). The wording in the office's own 2026 procedural guide is blunt. Anything added after that period, extra grounds, extra evidence, is not considered. No extension, and a missed date can't be excused.
The fee is 70 EUR, item 230(b) of the fee schedule under Act No. 145/1995 Coll. It has to be paid inside the same window. Pay late or not at all and the office discontinues the opposition. It doesn't chase you for the money.
Three months sounds comfortable. It usually isn't. A watch that reports monthly can put the item in your inbox in month two, and a report isn't a decision. By the time it reaches the right person and an attorney has actually read it, the window is a sliver.
Why a Slovak watch has to read Brussels
An EU trade mark counts as an earlier mark in Slovakia under section 4(c). So a watch that reads only the Slovak register has a hole in it the size of the whole Union.
The EUIPO doesn't examine earlier rights on its own motion either. If somebody files an EUTM that collides with your Bratislava brand, no Slovak official will call you. That application sits in the EU Trade Marks Bulletin for three months and then registers.
Our Slovak watch reads the national register, EUTM marks and Madrid registrations designating Slovakia together. It runs at 9 USD a month, billed daily, so you only pay for the days the watch is actually on. Czechia is the same price, and the two together cover the border region that most Czech and Slovak brands actually trade across.
What skipping it costs
Compare the two doors. Opposing inside the window costs 70 EUR plus your attorney's time. Undoing a registered mark afterwards means a cancellation or an invalidity proposal, with evidence, deadlines and representation on both sides. That's the expensive door, and it only opens once the cheap one has shut.
I won't pretend the cheap door is always available. It depends on whether the marks really do collide, and that judgement belongs to your attorney. Not to me, and not to software.
Three questions before you buy any Slovak watch
Ask which registers it reads. National only means you're blind to EUTM filings that cover Slovakia.
Ask whether it matches similar signs or only identical strings. The narrow double identity case is the one you can almost catch by hand. Lookalikes need a machine that reads a swapped letter, a lookalike character that renders the same, a phonetic twin, and a device mark carrying no text at all. Our eleven detection layers read over 22,000 character fraud patterns and five AI watch agents score every new filing against them.
Ask what you get and when you get it. A daily alert on a publication is worth more than a monthly PDF that lands in week ten of a twelve week window.
What a watch won't do
It won't file your opposition, and it won't tell you whether to. It won't decide whether two marks are confusingly similar, because that's a legal judgement. What it does is make sure the filing that looks like yours reaches you while the 70 EUR route is still open, instead of six months after.
If you're not sure your Slovak mark is being watched at all, the honest answer is that nobody is watching on your behalf unless you've arranged it. The per country pricing list is public with no form in front of it, the side by side against the enterprise vendors is on the comparison page, and the Czech half of this story is in why the Czech office stopped checking similar marks.
The sources are the offices' own. For Slovakia, Act No. 506/2009 Coll. as amended by Act No. 291/2018 Coll., effective 14 January 2019, plus the office procedural guide Metodika konania for trade marks in its 2026 revision, and the fee schedule under Act No. 145/1995 Coll. For Czechia, Act No. 441/2003 Coll. as amended by Act No. 286/2018 Coll., and the office annual report for 2019.