The Portuguese Government is preparing a proposal for further changes to the Industrial Property Code.
The code currently in force was approved by the Decree-Law No. 110/2018, published on 10 December 2018, having started its application just over a year ago. Despite the short time that has elapsed, the Government has recently sent to the stakeholders a proposal for new amendments. The Government considers that it is necessary to revisit this matter due to the following main reasons:
– to provide for the possibility of the European Patent Office, instead of the Portuguese PTO, preparing the Research Report with Written Opinion based on a translation of the claims provided in national patent applications;
– to reintroduce rules on the allocation of a classified security regime for some inventions that may be of interest to national defense;
– and to correct errors detected and include clarifications of some rules; particularly in the field of trademarks and logotypes, the proposal foresees extending the proof of use requirement to logotype holders under the same terms provided for trademarks.
We will return to this topic when the amendment is adopted.
For more information or any question sgcr@sgcr.pt.
