B&R Patents & Trademarks in Latin America

Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Office of the United States Trade Representative has released it’s 2012 Special 301 Report.

This document is an annual review of the state of intellectual property rights, protection and enforcement in trading partners around the world. This report is a valuable guide to understand current issues in IP Law and to highlight positive and negative trends on emerging markets.

The report creates a list of priority issues on IP. This year’s  report has mentioned Capacity Building Efforts, focusing on the lack of prosecution and conviction on the ground of IP infringements. The ever growing trends in Trademark Counterfeiting and Copyright Piracy, warning that the markets of pirated and counterfeit goods will soon surpass the sales volume of the licit vendors, and commenting on new ways for transportation and selling of counterfeit products such as the separate shipping of labels and packaging in order to evade enforcement efforts. Piracy over the internet, demanding stronger actions to strengthen legal regimes and enhance enforcement in order to respond to the increased availability of broadband internet connections and the piracy in new mobile devices. The violation of trade secrets and forced technology transfer, expressing the dangers of trade-distortive policies designed to promote ‘indigenous innovation’ through the lack of enforcement of IP rights and the creating of market barriers based on IP disclosures laws. Finally, the report also highlights the government use of software, trademarks and DNS, implementation of WTO TRIPS agreements, WIPO treaties and issues on IP and health policy.

However, this report is notorious for it’s Country Reports, in which US trading partners are sorted into the “Priority Watch List” and the “Watch List”, depending on their progress on IP issues and the vulnerability for US’s IP rights owners in their markets.

As to Latin American countries, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela were listed on the Priority Watch List, alongside Ukraine, Thailand, China and India. Concerns on these countries include inefficiency in Argentina’s judicial system, lack of protection against unfair commercial use and growing copyright piracy on the internet; Chile’s inefficient system for addressing patent issues for pharmaceutical products, unfair commercial use, and to fulfill it’s commitments  under the US-Chile FTA; and Venezuela’s withdrawal from the Andean Community in 2006, and widespread piracy and counterfeiting.

On the watch list, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru are said to have progressed in protecting IP Rights, but issues on enforcement and internet piracy remain largely neglected.

Read the Full Report here.

In Bogotá, Colombia march 16, 2012 the Culture ministers of the Andean Community countries agreed to start the Andean Plan for the Development of Cultural Industries 2012-2015 and gave precise guidelines to advance the proper management, enhancement and social appropriation of the Intangible Cultural material and Heritage.

These decisions were adopted at the First Meeting of the Andean Council of Ministers of Culture and Cultures, held on Friday March 16in Bogota, with the participation of the Ministers of Culture of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, as well as the vice Minister Intercultural of the Ministry of Culture of Bolivia and vice Minister of Ecuador Heritage Coordinator.

http://www.comunidadandina.org/prensa/notas/np19-3-12.htm

The WIPO: International Patent Filings Set New Record in 2011

The past days (March, 5, 2012) was published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) its annual audit of Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) filings from the last year. The principal date gave with this publication it is related with the growth of the volume of applications filed in the last year, that represents an increase of 10.7% over 2010 and the most important growth rate since 2005. “International patent filings under the WIPO-administered Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) set a new record in 2011 with 181,900 applications – a growth of 10.7“

The fastest growth in PCT applications are from China (+33.4%), Japan (+21%), Canada (+8.3%), the Republic of Korea (+8%) and the US (+8%). The United States remained the top PCT filer with 48,596 applications, but also there are a significant increases in applications originating from Japan and China (Japan and China filed 38,888 and 16,406 applications in 2011, respectively)

In Latin America the leader is Brazil with a 17.2% growth, but also have an important growth, countries like Mexico and Chile. In the next Graphic, we can see the international applications in latin American countries.

INTERNATIONAL APPLICATIONS BY LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRIES
Source: B&R Latina::Trademarks & Patents, elaborated with WIPO information

The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), it is an international system for seeking patents on a global scale. This system was adopted through the subscription of a treaty done at Washington on June 19 of 1970 . Actually 144 countries belong to the union according to the WIPO publication of the World Intellectual Property Indicators . Between these States, we can found different Latin-American countries: like Colombia, Chile, Brazil, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Peru, Ecuador, Mexico, and Nicaragua.

The studied of the statistics available in the Wipos website can us say that since 2005, the sum of the number of PCT applications filed by this developing countries and transition economies has been increasing annually.

After a visit to the Ecuadorian Institute of Intellectual Property (IEPI) the past days, the Ecuadorian President, Rafael Correa decided to make changes to the PTO office, because he considers that this institution need modernization to can offer a better service to the citizens.

The visit was done the February 23, 2012, and the president said that he found a big failure in the operation of the institution and to correct this, he proposed a new amend law.

The changes will be related with the access to priority medicines, a matter of public interest, the establishing procedures for issuing compulsory licenses, and the reinforcement to the copyright protection.
Currently the Ecuadorian Institute of Intellectual Property (IEPI) is the public agency in Ecuador, whose function is to ensure on behalf of the Ecuadorian State Intellectual Property Rights established in the Law, as in treaties and conventions. This institute is in charge of the processing of registration application, registration or granting of rights, trademarks, trade name, slogan, appellation of origin, patent rights,industrial designs and utility models.

The Ecuadorian Intellectual Property Institut has limited to 30 labour days the time frame an opponent trademark owner can file its opposition after publication.  Before this decision the Institut accepted that the deadline could be extended for another 30 days, making it a 60 days period.