BUSINESS BRIEF: URUGUAY
BUSINESS BRIEF: URUGUAY Patents
How do you register or secure patent rights, and is national or international coverage most appropriate?
Patent applications are prosecuted at the National Office of Intellectual Property, which is a department of the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining. Only regular or convention patent filings are acceptable in Uruguay. Uruguay is not a member to the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).
What are the costs of obtaining and defending a patent?
Te costs involved in filing and prosecuting a patent application until grant, in the average case, amount to approximately US $3,700. Tis estimate refers to a patent of invention containing up to 10 claims. Additional official fees are payable for filing, examination and grant, depending on the amount of claims involved.
Where can you find information on existing patents in your jurisdiction?
Information on existing and published patents must be requested at the patent office. Tere is some information available at the patent office site (
www.dnpi.gub.uy), but it is not comprehensive.
Is there anything unusual about the patent law that companies should be aware of, and what are the most common mistakes businesses make?
All information related to the invention sought for protection must be included at the moment of filing the application in Uruguay (within the specification). Tis includes assays, experimental data and any other information that may be required as technical support. At present, the patent office examiners are quite reluctant to accept the filing of assay results, etc, at a later stage.
In Uruguay, therapeutic and diagnosis methods as well as ‘uses’ are barred from patentability. In the past, we were able to obtain patents including
Swiss-style claims, but lately the examiners tend to reject such claims. In some instances it can be defended but the tendency in recent years has been to reject Swiss-style claims.
Trademarks
How do you register or secure trademark rights, and what protection does it grant? Trademarks rights are secured by filing and obtaining a registration before the Uruguayan Trademark Office. Te procedure is quite simple, but the Uruguayan Trademark Office has a backlog and is taking approximately two years to grant a mark that has not confronted any conflict.
When the trademark is granted it will be valid for 10 years, and is renewable indefinitely for identical periods of time. Once the trademark owner obtains registration, administrative or judicial actions can be filed against any company or particular that intends to register or use a mark that is identical, or similar, to the registration and covers the same, or related, goods/services.
Notorious and well-known trademarks have a broader protection.
What are the costs for registering and defending a trademark?
Te cost for filing a trademark application in one class for a word mark may vary from approximately US $705 to US $850. Te cost of defending a trademark depends on the nature of the infringement against such trademark.
What are the key threats to trademark owners, and what is the best strategy for dealing with infringement?
Te most common threats for trademark owners are any kind of infringement (counterfeiting, lookalikes, trade dress imitations, etc) that have impact on the trademarks image or on the sales.
Judicial actions—both civil and criminal—can be initiated against infringers in order to stop the
146 World Intellectual Property Review Annual 2012
infringement action and remove (in some cases even destroy) the infringing products from the market.
What are the most common mistakes trademark owners make?
Te most common mistake of trademark owners is to start using a mark without filing a trademark registration in our country.
If they already own a registration, the most common mistake is not having a skilful IP representative that has a solid market vigilance in order to advise them of any possible infringements.
Copyright
How should people ensure they are protected against copyright infringement?
To ensure copyright protection the author should always place his name in the work in the usual manner. If he does so, he will be considered the author of the work and will be able to file infringement claims against copyright infringements.
Furthermore, it is advisable to register the copyrighted work within the Uruguayan National Library, even though the registration of a work is not compulsory in our jurisdiction for it to receive copyright protection. Te benefits of registering a copyrighted work within the National Library is to have evidence as of the date of creation of the infringed work, and evidence of authorship.
What is the best way to deal with infringement, and what are the costs associated with it?
A copyright owner who has reason to believe the importation of copyright-infringing material is being prepared, has the faculty to lodge an application before the correspondent court requesting customs to suspend the release into free circulation of the suspected goods. In such cases the court shall issue a decision within
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