On July 1st2013, Croatia became the 28th member country of the European Union.
The EU accession resulted in an automatic extension of community trademark protection to this country.
However, prior national trademark owners from Croatia will be able to request a ban on the use of a community mark in Croatia if it is likely to infringe upon national rights.
The rule is therefore the same as that which applied to other countries when they acceded to the EU.
In practice, we have observed that the number of litigation cases linked to the expansion of the EU is relatively low in our area and that national and community trademarks seem to coexist with relative ease.