New challenges for the PROSUR cooperation
By Ivo Gagliuffi
For many countries that are trying to sustain economic, social growth and development by investing in the expansion of knowledge, the investment processes in innovation and also in human resources becomes a key piece that could strengthen and multiply the expected benefits and results of such an endeavor. Trademarks, patents or industrial designs therefore should aim to become tools of compulsory exploration and use. In particular, this involves activities to undertake and generate new products or processes with potential impact on the well-being of different national sectors.
A system like PROSUR contributes to this objective through collaborative and mutually beneficial work to promote greater development and exploitation of industrial property at the level of our region. This will help to progressively reduce the gaps that exists compared with other areas in the world (North America, Europe and Asia).
In this sense, from the Presidency Pro-Tempore that has been assumed by the National Institute for the Defense of Competition and the Protection of Intellectual Property (Indecopi) of Peru, and with the respective consensus from the other PROSUR offices. In the upcoming twelve months we will be continuing with the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH), an instrument that symbolizes regional integration or cooperation whose objective is to improve the efficiency of patent-granting office services, where the direct beneficiary is the inventor. This will be accompanied by further dissemination of this agreement for the use of new trade opportunities in PROSUR countries.
We will also implement the launch of the regional trademark application form, which seeks to generate a common form in order to request trademark protection, initially considering Chile, Uruguay and Peru as pilot countries. Likewise, a new edition of the Patented Inventions Contest- PROSUR, will be promoted, which in its first version generated great expectation and participation, with very promising results. In addition, a new public domain technology bulletin, focusing on gender and intellectual property will be issued as a way to highlight the work and contribution of researchers and inventors to the development of the region.
Finally, during the Pro-Tempore mandate we will coordinate the work for the nomination of PROSUR, in its third stage, with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). This will be a key milestone for the aspiration of confidence renovation in this space of articulation that has been growing in interest and activities among the industrial property offices of South America and Central America/Caribbean, in the last years.
There is no doubt that all of these are very important challenges. But we must also lay the groundwork for new areas of cooperation between our countries. There is still a long way to go through in order to make the industrial property be part of the region development agenda. It is the ambition of Indecopi and Peru to make it so.
