OM Weekly Digest (11-11-2016)
November 11 2016

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VENEZUELA | Intellectual Property, Patents, Trademarks | Official Fee Payment Odyssey in Venezuela – (Part I): your payment was rejected by Citibank

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As we reported in the OM Weekly Digest of 22 September 2016, and due to Citibank’s decision to close Venezuelan Government bank accounts for dollar transactions, the Venezuelan Patent and Trademark Office (SAPI in Spanish) did not receive the payment in dollars of intellectual property prosecution fees made by foreign applicants between August to October 2016.

SAPI’s solution (officialized by means of Official Notice issued on 8 November 2016) was to grant a deadline of 1 month -until 8 December 2016- to pay in new accounts the IP filing and prosecution fees that were rejected in the Citibank account.

On the other hand, the SAPI wants to confirm all payments made to the Citibank account (Both those made in 2015 and even those made prior to the closing of the account).  Accordingly, before 31 December 2016, the vouchers or certificates of payment in dollars made to the Citibank account must be filed before the SAPI.

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VENEZUELA | Intellectual Property, Patents, Trademarks | Official Fee Payment Odyssey in Venezuela – (Part II): new payment instructions

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By means of Official Notice issued on 3 November 2016, the Venezuelan Patent and Trademark Office (SAPI in Spanish) established that the payments of fees in foreign currency (dollars) must be made in its new account in the Societe Generale Bank.  The transfers will be in favor of a beneficiary bank (ItalBank International INC) and must be noted that the SAPI is the final beneficiary.

The SAPI warns that a maximum of ten filing and prosecution fees can be paid per bank deposit,  and also recommends to make the transfers 48 hours before the filing or procedure, in order to confirm payments.

For more information, please see the Official Notice.

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LATIN AMERICA, WORLD | Trademarks | The new edition (11th) of the Nice Classification will be in force in 2017

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Starting 1 January 2017, the 11th edition of the Nice Classification of Goods and Services will be in force.  Its entry into force country by country may vary (in the case of Colombia and others Latin American countries, will enter into force in the mentioned date).

Within the most relevant changes,  (i) the class 29 includes only oils for use in food, (ii) the class 31 changes from kitchen roots to roots for animal consumption and (iii) class 44 includes extermination of parasites in the aquaculture.  Also, the transfer of class of certain products was made, like medicated soap and disinfectant (from class 3 to 5), bracelets for medical use (from class 5 to 10), needle-threaders (from class 8 to 26) and nutcrackers (from class 8 to 21).

In summary, 377 additions, 53 deletions, 209 changes, 20 transfers and 12 changes with transfers were made.  Except for classes 23, 33 and 38, all others were subject to change.

For more information, we recommend to see this link, and also the next 2 documents (“1” and “2”) in “.xlsx” (Excel) in which the changes can be visualized.

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COLOMBIA | Corporate Law | Colombia extends deadline to register databases

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By means of Decree 1759 (8 November 2016), the Colombian Government extended the deadline to register databases in the National Database Registry until 30 June 2017.  That provision is applicable for those responsible for processing, private legal persons and public-private mixed legal persons registered in Colombian commerce chambers.  The deadline for responsibles and legal persons not registered in Colombian commerce chambers was extended until 30 June 2018.

The National Database Registry -RNBD in Spanish- is the public directory of databases which operate in Colombia and are subject to legal treatment (according to the Law 1581 of 2012).  The RNBD is administered by the Superintendence of Industry and Commerce and will be free access in the future.  The RNBD regulation is found in the External Circulars 02 (of 3 November 2015) and 001 (of 8 November 2016), and in the Chapter 26 of Single Decree 1074 of 2015.

For more information, please see this link.

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WORLD | Patents | WIPO Translate: new tool that allows translation of patents

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The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) unveiled a program for the translation of patent documents called WIPO Translate.  The tool is based on artificial intelligence and uses a neural machine translation technology, which manages to organize the words in a natural way.

For now, the program works for translations from Chinese, Japanese and Korean to English.  However, it is planned to extend the service to other languages.

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