After the European Court of Justice's decision in IP Translator (C-307/10), the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA) recently published a press release confirming that it will not change its current practice when examining the specification of goods and services of a trade mark application. 

As the court had required that any specification ought to be "sufficiently clear and precise", the Office does not see the need for a separate declaration by the applicant to the effect that in cases of the coverage of the class heading all alphabetical terms under that class are meant to be covered.  The Office's press release explains that such a declaration could lead to an illegal broadening of the specification (in the future) and could not be reconciled with the principle of legal certainty.  It was already the DPMA's practice that it accepted some class headings as sufficiently precise as required by the IP Translator decision in its para. 54, whereas other class headings did not comply with this requirement, the press release further states.