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.
Articles 133 to 139 of the Spanish Patents Act 11/1986 list all the precautionary measures.
Bear in mind that Spanish case law stipulates three requirements for adopting precautionary measures:
- legal credibility (fumus boni iuris)
- danger in delay (periculum in mora)
- granting of surety
Generally speaking, Spanish law stipulates that the burden of proof should fall on the claimant (Art.217.2 of the Spanish Civil Procedure Act, Law 1/2000).
However, in certain cases the burden of proof is reversed, that is, it falls on the defendant.
Therefore, in the case provided for in Article 61.2 of the Patents Act (Law 11/1986), if the object of a patent is a procedure for producing new products or substances, it is assumed, unless proven otherwise, that all products and substances with the same characteristics have been obtained by means of the patented procedure. This means that the defendant will have to prove that the product has been obtained by means of a procedure different from the patented procedure.
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.
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.
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