Harris Tweed the trade mark should have been granted exclusively to Harris, the Orb Trade Mark was granted. The Harris Tweed Association, a voluntary body, was formed to protect both the use of the Orb Trade Mark and to protect the use of the name ‘Harris Tweed’ from imitations. The original definition attached to the Orb Trade Mark stated that: Harris Tweed means a tweed, hand-spun, hand-woven and dyed by the crofters and cottars in the Outer Hebrides. In 1993, a new statutory body to guard the Orb Trade Mark, the Harris Tweed Authority, replaced the original Harris Tweed Association. Also in
United Kingdom trade mark law Parts A and B, each of which had different registration criteria) and 1938, the last of which remained in force until it was superseded in 1994. The current UK Trade Mark legislation is the Trade Marks Act 1994, which implements the European Trade Marks Directive into national law. The UK Intellectual Property Office radically altered the way UK national trade mark applications were examined in October 2007. Previously, UK national trade mark applications underwent a full examination both on absolute (distinctiveness) and relative (prior rights) grounds. In October 2007, the search which formed a part of the examination of applications