Spain ran low in 2012 regarding National IP rights
The Spanish Patent and Trademark Office (SPTO) has recently issued its provisional statistics for 2012 (provisional figures pending to be confirmed yet).
The first element to be highligthed is the general lowering of the overall number of IP titles applied for before (and granted by) the Office in 2012.
The number of granted patents decreased by 5.4% (3.338) in 2012. The same happened with Trademarks (down by 1.3% for an overall of 43.584 titles), trade names (3.1%), industrial designs (10.2%) and utility models (3.1%).
If we compare these figures with those corresponding to their homologous European titles (European patents and Community Trademarks mainly), the results vary significantly.
There was a slight increase in the number of patent applications before the European Patent Office (for an overall amount of 2.517, keeping the 14th position of the ranking, still far away from the European leaders in this field: Germany with 34.590, France-11.793- United Kingdon-6.763- The Netherlands-6.355- and Italy-4.706-) whereas the inter annual increase amounted only to a 0.5% for Community Trademarks (8.043 applications)
By regions, Madrid seems to be the most innovative one (if we consider this is to be said of the region that occupies the top within the patent application chart) with 625 patent applications in comparison to the 581 for Catalonia and 436 for Andalucia, number 2 and 3 of the ranking respectively.
The aforesaid data must in turn be tempered (on a downward basis), taking into account that unfortunately many of the patents applied for might be considered as “hollow patents”, that is without any practical relevance or embodying no technological breakthrough at all. The reason being they have been granted without the corresponding technical analysis (please note that the patent application procedure in Spain there are 2 different modalities: one with a substantive technical analysis and another one without it).
Finally, for trademark applications, the top 3 places are equally for Madrid-10.776-, Catalonia-8.145- and Andalucia-5.017-.
In Salvador Ferrandis and partners we see these figures with a bit of concern, as long as we consider there is an evident relationship between the number of applied for (and granted) IP rights and the economic status of a given country. The downturn shown by the numbers in 2012, at least for national IP rights, reflects to some extent the current economic situation. We expect that some initiatives such as the one released last May 2012th (text in Spanish), might revert the situation for this 2013 that just started.
Related Posts:
- SPTO develops plans to accelerate the adoption of Report of State of the Art for national patent applications
- Brexit: Comments on its impact on European Union trademarks.
- CJEU Decision in “Genesis”, a good example of the relevance of the autonomous interpretation of the CTM Regulation
- The Unitary Patent package, a brief overview