• Multilateral cooperation on Industrial Property
• INDELEBLES: A trip through the history and international presence of Spanish brands
• WIPO General Assemblies
• 10th anniversary of the FIT/ES for cooperation with Latin America
• Death of Carlos Fernández-Nóvoa

Multilateral cooperation on Industrial Property

A meeting of the Directors General of Latin American national Industrial Property Offices was held on 1 and 2 October 2015 in the SPTO offices in Madrid, organised jointly by the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office (SPTO) and the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).

The meeting’s success points once more to the importance of multilateral cooperation in Industrial Property, which has always been one of the priorities of the SPTO.

Agenda
The agenda on the morning of Thursday 1st focused on the management of a National Industrial Property Office. The SPTO presented a number of aspects relating to its strategic plan and quality policy, human resources management, internal and external communication strategies, dissemination plans and mechanisms for international cooperation. The representatives of the various Latin American national Industrial Property offices then shared their experiences and best practices in this area.

In the afternoon, the Latin American Jurisprudence Data Base was presented. This is a project set up in the framework of cooperation with WIPO in which Colombia, Costa, Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Spain, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay are participating. This data base will make it possible to consult, via a single platform, the administrative sentences and decisions of several Latin American countries and Spain. It was welcomed by all the countries and, after the presentation, an interesting debate took place in which the participants were able to share their points of view and experiences. The project also sparked great interest among the non-participating offices and it is hoped that they will join in the future.

Finally, the meeting of the Latin American Programme for Industrial Property and Promotion of Development (Programa Iberoamericano de Propiedad Industrial y Promoción del Desarrollo – IBEPI) took place on Friday 2nd. This promotes multilateral cooperation in Industrial Property among Latin American countries. The progress made in two of the main areas of the programme was described:

- CIBEPYME, a platform offering information, services and free assistance to SMEs in the field of Intellectual Property.

- INFOTEC, a system that provides Technological Information services allowing for the recovery and processing of technical, legal and commercial information from various sources, mainly documents on Invention Patents in various data bases.

In addition, a debate was held on the future of this Programme. The aim is to strengthen cooperation with international Industrial Property organisations such as the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM) and the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).