Annual meeting of Regional Centres

Analysis of the current situation of IP in Spain

The SPTO counts on the support of the Regional Centres of Industrial Property in its task of informing, guiding, awareness-raising, spreading and using and registering the different IP modalities. These Centres, which are located in the different Spanish Regions (Comunidades Autónomas, by their Spanish name), are aimed to bring the IP world and the different services offered by the SPTO closer to users.

The XVIII Annual Meeting of Regional Centres of Information on Industrial Property was held in Valladolid on October 25th and it was attended by representatives from the Spanish Regions of Andalucía, Asturias, Canarias, Castilla y León, Extremadura, La Rioja, Madrid, Murcia, Navarra, País Vasco and Valencia, as well as SPTO representatives. The meeting was opened by the General Director of Industry and Competitiveness of the Castilla y León Regional Government together with the SPTO Director.

During the meeting, the main novelties in the field of the Industrial Property in general and the SPTO working changes in particular were discussed. Some topics raised were the evolution on patent applications from the effectiveness of the Law on Patents 24/2015, the evolution on inventions databases, especially Espacenet, and on the statistical data related to the Regional Centres in 2017.

As usual, the meeting proceeded with an opinion and experience exchange that allowed each Regional Centre to make an analysis of its actions along the year, which was a perfect way of estimating the activity done in every single Region in the field of IP.

The following day and in the context of the 'Cátedra Carlos Fernández-Nóvoa' took place an IP conference at the Technology Centre CARTIF, located at the Technology Park Boecillo. The conference ended with a visit to the CARTIF facilities, where the staff of the Centre offered an explanation to the attendees about the experiments carried out there.