On April 15, a webinar was organized by Spanish Patent and Trademark Office (SPTO) that can be watched through its website. The intention of the SPTO was to announce that they are working in a draft to amend the IP laws (first draft is expected to be submitted before the Congress by the end of 2021).<\/p>\n
The SPTO declared its willingness to seek consultations from different operators, among other judges, Association of Industrial Property Agents and other ministerial bodies.<\/p>\n
Regarding trademark law<\/u>:<\/span> the SPTO intends to remove the applicant’s postal address when the application is published at the BOPI (to avoid the massive sending of fraudulent letters); establish a specific regulation that addresses the cases of cancellation of trademarks for lack of payment of the official fees of signs included in bankruptcy proceedings; and to increase the opposition fees, since the implementation of the proof of use system seems to have increased the workload of the trademarks area of the SPTO.<\/p>\n Regarding designs law<\/u>:<\/span> among other proposals, the SPTO intends to remove the grounds based on article 6 Ter CUP\u2019s (emblems, shields, etc.) as ex officio ground for refusal; the reproduction \u201cby reference\u201d of the design would be allowed, when it is already in other files of the SPTO (in order to reduce the burden on the applicant); and the establishment of free public licenses is proposed, in such a way that the owner of a design offers a free, contractual, temporary and non-exclusive license under the condition that the licensee indicates the ownership of the design, for advertising purposes.<\/p>\n And with regard to patents<\/u>:<\/span> the possible extension of the object of utility models to substances and compositions for pharmaceutical use, which are not integrated into “large drugs”, will be considered; the rejection of patents that seek the protection of plants and animals obtained from essentially biological procedures would be expressly contemplated, in line with the latest decisions of the EPO; to expressly contemplate also the nullity of the Complementary Protection Certificate (CPC) when the base patent is revoked; It will also be proposed the removal of the exception to patentability of article 5.6 (DNA sequences), following the same logic of harmonization with European practices; possibility to stay Court\u2019s proceeding when it has as its object a patent in respect of which an administrative decision is required (for example, an opposition procedure before the Office); and including in favour of Public Research Centres the same reduction of official fees that stated for Universities.<\/p>\n We will follow the next steps of this proposal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On April 15, a webinar was organized by Spanish Patent and Trademark Office (SPTO) that can be watched through its website. The intention of the SPTO was to announce that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"sector_noticias":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3220","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-news"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n