If you want to distinguish your goods, services or both from those of another company, you may need a trademark or trade name. Find out what they are, what their registration procedure is and what it involves.
Información sobre los plazos de presentación de solicitudes de transformación de marcas de la Unión Europea en marca nacional española. Más información
If you have a new device, product or procedure that solves a technical problem or has a practical advantage, there are different ways to protect it in Spain and other countries. Find out how.
Does your innovation lie in the aesthetics, ornamentation or appearance of your product? Protect it through industrial design. Find out what rights registration confers and how to proceed.
Patents published worldwide are a valuable source of scientific, technical and commercial information.
reembolso del 75% del coste de Búsquedas e Informes Tecnológicos de Patentes. Más información*
If you are an entrepreneur or a company and you want to boost and improve the profitability of your business by adequately protecting the intangible assets of your organisation, in this space you will find what you need.
For both patents and utility models, the inventions must be novel, imply inventive step and have industrial applicability.
In the case of utility models, the requirements are similar to those for patents, that is, novelty and inventive step, although they are applied in a less strict sense. Also, utility models will always be objects (instruments, tools, apparatus, devices) whose configuration, structure or build brings considerable advantages for its use or manufacture.
Therefore, procedural inventions, chemical products, foodstuffs or inventions that incorporate biological material cannot be protected as utility models.
From 1 April 2017, when the new Patent Act 24/2015 of 24 July enters into force, only inventions referring to procedures and those that relate to biological material and pharmaceutical substances and compositions will be excluded from utility model protection.
Yes, it is possible to request to change a utility model application to an invention patent application up until the deadline for responding to opposition notices and, where applicable, objections formulated by the SPTO. If no one files a notice of opposition, the applicant may ask for their application to be changed up until the protection is granted.
If the change is accepted the submission date and priority will not change.
The following documentation must be submitted:
- completed application form (form 3101, available in the Utilities/Forms section of the SPTO web page, www.oepm.es) indicating that you are requesting a change of application type (it is important to state “invention patent” as application type, and “change to application type” as the type of request being made and to provide all the details of the original utility model)
- A summary of the invention of no more than 150 words.
Applicants are required to pay a “Change of application type” fee for this procedure, as detailed in the current list of Public Prices and Fees (available in the Utilities section/Public Fees and Prices of the SPTO web page).
The documentation can be presented at the same places indicated for submitting patents or utility models.
Currently, only a small but significant number of countries and regions offer utility model protection. They are: Germany, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, ARIPO, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Slovakia, Spain, Estonia, Ethiopia, Russia, the Philippines, Finland, France, Georgia, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Mexico, OAPI, the Netherlands, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Czech Republic, South Korea, the Republic of Moldavia, Tajikistan, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay and Uzbekistan.(http://www.wipo.int/sme/es/ip_business/utility_models/utility_models.htm)
It is possible to request a patent in other countries based on a utility model since the PRIORITY RIGHT (as set out in the Paris Union Convention) also applies to other countries, with the same 12 month duration as is used for patents.
You should also bear in mind that not all countries permit utility model protection and therefore the only way to obtain protection for an invention is through a patent.
In the case of the European patent, it is possible to obtain the priority right based on a prior utility model application in Spain.
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