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.
Twenty years from the submission date for patents and ten years for utility models. Only in the case of patents for pharmaceutical and phytosanitary products can what is known as a Supplementary Protection Certificate (SPC) be applied for, which extends the protection given for a maximum period of five years once the patent has expired.
There are basically two: to pay the annual fees and make use of the invention.
Once the patent has been granted, applicants are required to pay the annual fee to maintain the rights, as detailed in the current list of Public Fees and Prices (available in the Utilities section/Public Fees and Prices of the SPTO web page). If they do not do this in the correct manner by the deadline, the patent will expire and the object protected by said patent will become part of the public domain.
Furthermore, the holder also has the duty to exploit the patent, either themselves or via a person authorised by them using an exploitation licence.
The holder can benefit from a 50% discount on the above mentioned annual fees if they send a written declaration to the SPTO offering licences affording full rights.
Patents are granted to new inventions that imply inventive step and have industrial applicability.
The invention must be technical in character or nature, that is, it must constitute a solution to a technical problem.
In addition, it must be possible for an expert in the field to execute it in practice and, therefore, a sufficiently clear and complete description should be provided on the application form.
An invention could be a product (substance or composition), a piece of apparatus (device or system), a procedure (method) or a use (application), provided it meets the requirements for patentability.
In the Guidelines for the Examination of Patent Applications, available in the Inventions section of the SPTO web page, you will find more information on the requirements for patentability and exceptions to this.
In accordance with the International Patent Law Treaty (PLT) which came into effect in Spain in November 2013, the minimum documentation that must be submitted is as follows:
- An express or implicit indication in Spanish that the applicant is applying for a patent or utility model.
- Information in Spanish that enables the applicant to be identified and contacted.
- A document that, at first glance, appears to constitute a description (this can be submitted in any language, or can even be in diagram form). For the purposes of the submission date, a reference in Spanish to a previously submitted application, made at the time the application is submitted, will replace the description or any diagrams.
The application can be completed at a later date, but the submission date will be that on which at least the aforementioned items were presented.
It is important to point out that the purpose of the invention cannot be extended after the submission date of the patent application. It is therefore recommended that the applicant submits all elements of the application right at the start (description, claims and, where applicable, diagrams and summary).
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