# The announcement of our Trademark Series
The transposition of the EU Trademark Directive 2015/2436 has led to significant changes in German and French trademark law. In the new Trademark Series we therefore want to present the most important changes in trademark law.
Our focus will of course be on French-German comparative law and we will have to admit again that a complete harmonisation is not yet ready!
As a reminder, the Directive does not concern Union trademarks, which are regulated by the European Regulation (2017/1001).
The Directive intends to harmonise EU trademark law by establishing a common framework for trademark law through mandatory and optional transposition requirements. In addition to the mandatory requirements, each Member State of the European Union is therefore free to transpose the optional requirements of the Directive into national law. This may lead to differences between Member States in certain aspects.
In Germany, the Trade Mark Directive was transposed by the “Markenrechtsmodernisierungsgesetz” (MaMoG) (Trade Mark Law Modernisation Act), which entered into force on 14 January 2019.
France, in turn, has transposed the Directive into French law by Decree n°2019-1169 of 13 November 2019, which entered into force on publication of implementing Decree n°2019-1316 of 11 December 2019 (subject to certain provisions which entered into force on 1 April 2020).
The importance of the trade mark law reform can also be seen in the efforts of the DPMA to make the new trade mark law accessible for practical use. With a so-called "roadshow", the DPMA wanted to present the most important changes in trade mark law in eight German cities. Due to the corona virus, however, the majority of the events had to be cancelled. The INPI in France also offers numerous webinars to explain the trademark law reform in France.
In the next few days we will see the differences between France and Germany in trade mark law following the transposition of the Directive.