On April 26, World Intellectual Property Day was celebrated, whose main objective is to highlight the importance and contribution of Intellectual Property rights in the promotion of innovation and creativity.
There is consensus that the adequate protection of Intellectual Property is a fundamental engine in social and economic development. For this reason, it is necessary to have robust systems and institutions that facilitate and encourage innovation, as well as that constitute tools that ensure the holders of Intellectual Property rights a correct remuneration of the benefits derived from the exploitation of these. In other words, clear rules and adequate protection for creators and inventors are required.
However, in the particular case of Chile, this year World Intellectual Property Day coincides with the upcoming entry into force of two initiatives that come to modernize our Intellectual Property system and adjust to international standards in this area.
In the first place, during the year 2021, an amendment to Law 19,039 on Industrial Property was published in the Official Gazette, which aims to modernize this regulation, especially in the field of trademarks, patents and industrial designs.
In this way, new types of trademarks are incorporated into our legislation that allow us to protect the so-called “non-traditional brands“, such as olfactory marks, three-dimensional marks, moving marks and tactile marks.
Also, it is relevant to highlight the incorporation of the institution of the expiration of a trademark for its lack of use, especially considering that Chile was one of the few countries in the world in which a requirement for the use of registered trademarks was not established. With this new scenario, registered trademarks that are not used in the national market for a period of 5 years will be vulnerable to interested third parties that may require their expiration.
In the case of patents for inventions, the so-called “provisional patents” that allow to require the protection on an invention without having all the antecedents and granting a period of 12 months for the interested party to present the application for a definitive patent, preserving the priority date of the provisional one.
The new regulations also incorporate an abbreviated procedure for depositing designs through which their protection is streamlined.
Secondly, on April 4, Chile deposited the instrument of accession to the Madrid Protocol with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). This system is an alternative for the international registration of trademarks in one or more of the 126 countries that are currently members of this system. In other words, domestic applicants will be able to require the registration of their trademark abroad in a centralized manner, in a single language and by paying a single set of fees. Similarly, foreign trademark owners may extend their protection to Chile.
The Madrid Protocol will be implemented and available for use in Chile from July 4. Before that date, it is also expected that the amendments to our Industrial Property Law will enter into force.
All the changes described above constitute a significant advance in the protection of Intellectual Property in our country, allowing not only to modernize our legislation in this area, but also by establishing incentives in research and development, which brings benefits and economic growth.
However, these initiatives can be severely overshadowed if at the constitutional level a vision is adopted to consider Intellectual Property as an obstacle to innovation and access to culture. In this same sense, the fact that Intellectual Property rights grant their owner an exclusive right over an intangible asset, for a period, cannot be seen as an obstacle to cultural development and innovation, but, on the contrary, is an effective legal mechanism for its incentive.
In this way, more than ever in Chile we celebrate World Intellectual Property Day as an exceptional occasion to reiterate the importance of this matter in social and economic development, as well as being an opportunity to reflect on the relevance of precautionary and not discourage our Prop system.Intellectual iedad in Chile.
The content expressed in this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.
