INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY | ptw-international

Intellectual Property

NATIONAL TRADEMARKS

Spanish Trademarks

A ll requests and applications have to be addressed to the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office in Mad rid .

All signs or graphic representation of a certain brand or product serve to distinguish them in the market from the competitors or their products.

From the application date onwards, the trademark protects the exclusive commercial exploitation to the owner for 10 years. Thereafter the trademark can be renewed for 10 more years. This applies to the Spanish jurisdictio n.

United States Trademarks

PTW also specializes in the application of US-trademarks by direct national applications through the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

DESIGNS

Community Designs

A new system has been created for protecting designs in Europe.
This system effectively created two forms of Community design rights. The regulation provides for registered and unregistered Community Designs, which will be enforceable in all member states in the EU.

Unregistered Community Designs

Unregistered design protection came into force on March 6th, 2002, which means that from that date all qualifying designs automatically receive European Union wide protection, lasting three years from the first public disclosure of the design.

Registered Community Designs

On January 1st, 2003 the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM), opened its doors to applications for Registered Community Designs. Registration will last for a maximum of 25 years from filing, with renewal fees due every 5th year.

COPYRIGHTS

Copyright is a form of protection provided to the authors of original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works, both published and unpublished. The 1976 Copyright Act generally gives the owner of copyright the exclusive right to reproduce the copyrighted work, to prepare derivative works, to distribute copies of the copyrighted work, to perform the copyrighted work publicly, or to display the copyrighted work publicly.

The copyright protects the form of expression rather than the subject matter of the writing. For example, a description of a machine could be copyrighted, but this would only prevent others from copying the description; it would not prevent others from writing a description of their own or from making and using the machine. Copyrights are registered by the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress.