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.
Information on the deadlines for filing applications for transformation of European Union trademarks into Spanish national trademarks. See more
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.
El Bono 3 del Fondo para PYMEs 2025, que cubre la elaboración de Informes Tecnológicos de Patentes (ITP) y Búsquedas Retrospectivas se cerrará el lunes 10 de febrero de 2025 al cierre de la jornada laboral. Próximamente se informará sobre su reapertura. Puede consultar más información aquí.
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.
Respondemos todas aquellas dudas referentes a los diferentes procesos implicados en la propiedad industrial.
It depends on how long it has been since they left the company. The law states that inventions for which a patent application is presented within the year following the termination of the working relationship or service can be reclaimed by the company owner.
In this regard, the new Patent Act 24/2015, of 24 July, states that when a patent application is presented for an invention within the year following the termination of the working relationship or service it will be considered to have been made during the effective period of said relationship or service, unless proved otherwise.
According to the statistics on Spanish patents and utility models requested in 2014 by holders:
|
Year 2014 |
Patents |
Utility Models |
|
Companies |
36,22% |
33,93% |
|
Inventors |
40,45% |
64,76% |
|
Public Bodies and Universities |
20,19% |
1,27% |
There are a various kinds of assistance granted by different public organisations and autonomous regions. Management of this assistance is the responsibility of each organisation. In order to facilitate access to this information, the SPTO web page includes a section summarising the main features of the assistance provided, together with contact information for each of the public bodies that manage them (see “Grants and Subsidies”).
The SPTO also allows applicants with low incomes to defer payment. This means people whose income is no more than four times the national minimum wage or those whose joint income when added to that of their spouse is no more than twice the national minimum wage. In these cases, the patent can be granted to the applicant without the need to pay any fees in the first three years. The unpaid amounts are then made up in successive years.
Since 2007 the SPTO also has a programme of grants to help applicants requesting national, European or international patents or utility models. These grants are focused on translation costs and the fees payable in the various national or regional offices in order to obtain a patent, provided the requirements stated in the grant application programmes published annually in the BOE are fulfilled. All the information on this Grant Programme can be found on the SPTO web page.
The right granted by the patent does not protect the claimed invention alone, but also the "equivalents"; that is, protection is given taking into account not only the content of the claims, supported by the description and the drawings, but also what is considered equivalent: a medium is considered equivalent if it has the same function, method and results.
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