Industrial property
Industrial Property is a set of exclusive rights that protect both the activity manifested in our products, new procedures or new designs, as well as the commercial activity, through the exclusive identification of products and services offered on the market.
The Industrial Property Registry is an autonomous body of the Ministry of Industry that promotes and supports technological and economic development by granting legal protection to the different types of Industrial Property through the granting of invention patents, utility models, industrial designs, trademarks and trade names and disseminating information relating thereto.
Legal protection
Industrial Property titles refer to Industrial Inventions, Industrial Designs and Distinctive Signs of Products and Services.
For the legal protection of inventions, the Industrial Property Registry grants Patents and Utility Models.
What is a patent?
A patent is a title that recognises the right to exploit the patented invention exclusively, preventing others from making, selling or using it without the consent of the owner. In return, the patent is made available to the public for general knowledge.
The right granted by a patent is not so much that of manufacture, offering on the market and using the subject matter of the patent, which the owner always has and can exercise, but, above all and singularly, “the right to exclude others” from the manufacture, use or introduction of the patented product or procedure in the trade.
The patent may refer to a new procedure, a new device, a new product or a refinement or improvement thereof.
The duration of the patent is twenty years from the date of filing of the application. In order to keep it in force, the annual fee must be paid once it is granted.
What is a utility model?
The Utility Model protects inventions with a lesser degree of inventiveness than those protected by Patents, consisting, for example, of giving an object a configuration or structure from which some utility or practical benefit is derived.
The device, instrument or tool protected by the Utility Model is characterised by its “utility” and not by its “aesthetics” as occurs in industrial design. The scope of the protection of a Utility Model is similar to that conferred by the Patent.
The duration of the Utility Model is ten years from the filing of the application. The annual fees must be paid to maintain the right.
Industrial designs
This is the legal protection of industrial designs (for both models and drawings)
Distinctive signs
For the legal protection of distinctive signs, the IPR grants product or service Trademarks and Trade Names.
What is a trademark?
A trademark is a title that grants the exclusive right to use a certain identification of a product or service on the market.
What is a trade name?
A Trade Name is a title that grants the exclusive right to the use of the names of persons and companies as identifiers thereof on the market.
Trade names, such as Industrial Property titles, are independent of the names of companies registered in the mercantile registers. Having the company registered in the Mercantile Register, does not grant any ownership or exclusivity of the name that is used commercially.
International trademark
It makes it possible to obtain the protection of a trademark in all countries that have signed an agreement to that effect with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in order to benefit from the advantages of this agreement, with the applicant having to have first applied for the trademark in their country of origin.
European trademark
It is characterised by establishing a single procedure for obtaining a trademark for the entire territory of the European Union, through the Intellectual Property Office of the European Union (EUIPO), based in Alicante.
Intellectual property
The Intellectual Property registry is an organisation provided for in the Intellectual Property Law, conceived as one of the systems for the protection of Intellectual Property rights.
By registering the works subject to protection in the competent Registry, a means of proof is obtained to prove who is the author of a registered work and to whom the economic exploitation rights of the work relate. Exploitation rights have as a general rule a duration of seventy years after the death of the author.
Legal framework
The main applicable legislation on Intellectual Property is:
R.D.L. 1/1996, of 12 April, approving the revised text of the Law on Intellectual Property, published in the BOE on 22 April 1996. And by order of 4 April 1996 the Territorial Intellectual Property Registry is established.
The legislation on Intellectual and Industrial Property is the exclusive competence of the State (art. 149 of the Spanish Constitution), and the execution of this legislation corresponds to the Government of Catalonia under article 11.3 of the Statute of Autonomy. It is a regulation in constant development taking into account the importance of technical advances in this matter. Spanish legislation is increasingly conditioned by Community legislation that aims to harmonise legislation in this matter in all countries of the European Union.
By virtue of international conventions and treaties to which the State must adhere, Spanish authors are protected in almost all countries of the world. Foreigners have the protection that corresponds to them according to the agreements signed with their countries.
The Copyright indicator
This symbol usually appears in the works and indicates who is the exclusive holder of the exploitation right of a work. It is standard to indicate the place and date of disclosure of the work after the holder.
