Patents and The PCT Experience in Chile
Chile joined the PCT Patent Cooperation Treaty in 2009, producing very important IP changes in our country as a result of being part of the group of more than 150 countries belonging to this international patent treaty.
Chile not only joined the PCT in 2009, but also the CLPTO (INAPI) office since October 2012 has been designated International Preliminary Examining Authority (IPEA) and International Search Authority (ISA), becoming the second authority in the region, along with Brazil, and the second country from the Spanish speaking world in developing search reports and preliminary international patentability reports, only preceeded by the Spanish Office.
With just over 10 years of being part of the PCT, it can be said that this experience has been a very positive one, although the number of applications has not increased as expected, and rather has had a very stable pattern in the number of yearly applications.
The years where more patent applications were filed in Chile before the entry into the PCT were the years 2005 (3,007), 2006 (3,215), 2007 (3,806) and 2008 (3,952), this mainly due to the fact that at that time Chile was only a member of the Paris Convention, granting a period of one year to submit applications claiming a priority and not the 30 months established by the PCT. The entry into the PCT gave an additional term to evaluate whether or not to file patent applications in Chile.
Then with the access to be a PCT member in 2009, and for the next 10 years, patent applications have kept a fairly stable figure averaging slightly more than 3,000 applications per year (see attached graphic).
This leads to the conclusion that developing countries receive patent applications that companies really need to protect in those countries, and that not only because of adhering to new treaties there will be more filings of patent applications.
Chile, because of being mainly a powerful country in the areas of mining, agriculture and wine, aquaculture and forestry, the detailed areas of the most relevant patent protection are for pharmaceutical products, bio-technology, chemical products, chemistry of materials, digital communication, machinery, metallurgy and also civil engineering matters.
The five countries that file the greatest number of patent applications at the CLPTO are: the USA, Chile, China, Germany and Switzerland, with the USA being the most important filing country in Chile, with more than 900 applications in the year 2019.
Currently, the complete processing of patents is done mainly through the Internet, with a very modern and well-prepared Patent Office system , which has been a pioneer in working remotely in Chile that belongs to the public sector.
Nowadays, a patent application takes between 3 to 4 years from the time it is filed until the time when the patent is granted, which is within the accepted period of time and well below some other terms in other Latin American countries.
(Information obtained from the CLPTO).
