Responsibility marks and hallmarks

A responsibility mark describes who brought the product to market (who is the manufacturer or importer). It makes it possible to identify who made the item, for example which jeweller.

A responsibility mark usually consists of the manufacturer's name, an abbreviation of this or a symbol. The mark must not contain a degree of fineness, for example 585 or 925.

The responsibility mark you stamp on your goods must be identical to the responsibility mark you have registered with the Norwegian Industrial Property Office (NIPO).

A hallmark is a guarantee of the degree of purity or fineness of precious metals. The fineness is determined by official testing (assay) of the metal. The hallmark is an official mark or series of marks stamped on goods made of precious metals, such as platinum, gold and silver.

The Norwegian Metrology Service supervises that goods marketed as gold, silver and platinum are stamped with a valid responsibility mark and a permitted fineness. This means that the Norwegian Metrology Servicecan make inspection visits to outlets. For questions about marks of fineness, contact the Norwegian Metrology Service.

If you are in the gold and silversmith business and want to sell self-produced goods, you are obliged to have a responsibility mark so that the manufacturer can be identified. The responsibility mark must be registered with the Norwegian Industrial Property Office. The responsibility mark shall be a means of maintaining equal confidence in goods made of precious metals and shall ensure that the real fineness of an item is in accordance with the fineness stamped on the item.

You will find an overview of responsibility labels in Norway in our search service. Here you can see what the brand looks like and who is the owner of the brand. The owner of the mark may be someone other than the potential jeweler's shop that sells the piece of jewellery. Please note that not all brands listed are valid. Therefore, remember to check the status. The Norwegian Industraial Property Office does not have an overview of all older liability marks that are no longer in force.

Registrations of liability marks are announced in the Norwegian Trademark Gazette on the Norwegian Industrial Property Office's  website.

Registration takes place at the Norwegian Industrial Property Office. There is no central register in the EU/EEA, but national registers in the individual countries.

Use the application form in Altinn. You will receive a receipt immediately.

We have a secure electronic solution in the Norwegian internet portal Altinn, for those of our customers without a national ID number. File applications and communicate with us electronically.

A registration provides protection for ten years, and the registration can be renewed every ten years for a fee. This can happen an unlimited number of times.

• Application fee: NOK 1,000
• Resumption of abandoned application: NOK 500
• Renewal of responsibility label: NOK 700
• Additional fee where a request for renewal is submitted after the end of the registration period (respite fee): NOK 300
• Administrative verification of registration: NOK 2,500

We take the application up for processing within 1 month after you have paid the application fee.

If you do not pay electronically when submitting, we will send you an invoice for the application fee within 1 week after we have received the application. You have 1 month to pay the invoice.

We investigate whether there are any formal deficiencies in the application. We then investigate whether there are any obstacles to us being able to register the mark, i.e. whether the mark contravenes the law, public order and morals, whether it is apt to mislead or whether it is apt to be confused with someone else's responsibility mark, older marks or incorporated marks.

If we find formal errors or obstacles to registration, we will write to you and give you a deadline of 3 months to correct the errors or send us a changed mark. If you send us an amended mark in the existing application, we will examine this as a new mark.

When everything is in order with the application, we register the responsibility mark immediately and send you a registration certificate in Altinn or in the post if you do not use Altinn.

If you believe that the Norwegian Industrial Property Office has registered a liability mark on the wrong basis, you can complain about this by sending us a written request for an administrative review.

The claim must contain:

• the name and address of the person delivering the claim
• the number of the registration that is required to be verified
• on which grounds the claim is based
• necessary documentation of the circumstances that apply to the claim

Anyone can request administrative verification of a responsibility label as long as the registration remains valid.

If you import goods made of precious metal from EU/EEA countries that are legally stamped in such a country, you as an importer or dealer of such goods do not need to stamp them with the Norwegian mark of responsibility. This only applies if the mark in question, which is already stamped on the item, is not suitable to be confused with a Norwegian responsibility mark. You can check this in the responsibility mark register at the Swedish Patent Office.

The manufacturer of the item must be identifiable, and you must be able to document that the mark has been placed on the item in a legal manner. Before an item is put up for sale, you, as an importer or retailer of the items, must notify the Swedish Regulatory Agency with information and documentation of the stamping. It is Justerveseten that controls goods made of precious metal. You will find more information and a contact person on Justervesenet's pages.

NB: Remember that a watch is considered precious metal if its fineness indicates this. Also remember that Switzerland is not an EEA country and that if you import precious metal from there, the responsibility mark must be registered with the Patent Office - see info below on imports from countries outside the EU/EEA.

If you import goods in precious metal from countries outside the EU/EEA area, the goods must be stamped with a responsibility mark that is registered with the Norwegian Patent and Trademark Office. As an importer, you are responsible for the degree of fineness stamped on the item being in accordance with the actual degree of fineness.