PERU: An Introduction to Intellectual Property

OVERVIEW  

Peru has been recognized as one of the fastest growing economies in Latin America over the last thirty years. This economic growth has been accompanied by a rise in private investment, both foreign and national, which has boosted trademark applications in the country, given that the companies investing in Peru must seek the protection of their trademarks before entering the market. For this reason, we went from 26,375 trademark applications in the year 2010 to 42,058 trademark applications in the year 2019, which clearly demonstrates an enormous increase in private investment in Peru.

In saying that, the last two years have been hard for our economy due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Notwithstanding the above-mentioned, the Peruvian economy is recovering very strongly and this positive trend is expected to continue through the year 2022. Since trademark applications are a good way to measure economic trends, this recovery is also evidenced in the variation of trademark filings. The 42,058 trademark applications filed in the year 2019 were reduced to 37,250 in the year 2020, but this number recovered in the year 2021, even surpassing the number of applications filed in 2019. 2021 closed the year with around 42,500 filed trademark applications.

However, it is not only worth mentioning the economic recovery, but also the lessons and advances we have obtained throughout the crisis. Like other crises which help in generating change, the pandemic has also brought some positive changes, which will help national and foreign companies to obtain faster and better protection of their intellectual property rights.

Although by 2019 the Peruvian Trademark Office was considered one of the world's fastest trademark offices, the digitalization of its procedures were not as advanced and applicants had to physically attend the Peruvian Trademark Office to review a file or submit documents. The pandemic helped force the evolution of this process, making all of the procedures 100% virtual, which has generated more efficient procedures and better trademark protection.

Some of the benefits obtained through the Trademark Office’s digitalization include:

1. A better registration procedure.

Although it has technically been possible to file online applications for many years, this option was not used because the system was not efficient for Peruvian representatives. However, the Peruvian Trademark Office has invested heavily in this procedure, which allows not only the applications to be filed online, but also for resolutions to be served and answered electronically. This helps in reducing the prosecution terms, as representatives do not have to go through the time wasting process of serving procedural resolutions.

2. Better and more efficient protection of rights.

The advantages in this field have been the greatest, especially in relation to the broader measures, which aid the trademark owners in preventing the entry of infringing goods to the market.

When speaking of broader measures, some of the main issues that we encountered were the time the Authority took to receive the complaint and issue precautionary measures, and the high cost of conducting the diligence of inspection. With this new system, both problems have been solved.

In relation to the time that the Peruvian Intellectual Property Authority took to issue the precautionary measures, the problem generally lay in the fact that even if an infringement action was filed timely, by the time the Trademark Office served the Customs Authority with the precautionary measures, the infringing imported goods had already been released and introduced into the market. This would occur due to the time lost in the physical filing of the infringement action and the serving of the decision that granted the precautionary measures. Now that the whole procedure has been digitalized, the loss of time has become almost nonexistent, making the serving of decisions that grant precautionary measures faster, ensuring that the risk of imported goods being released into the market before the serving of a resolution is now significantly lower.

In addition to this, the cost of the procedures has greatly decreased given that the diligence of inspections can now be virtual. In the past, the importation of infringing products occurred in customs offices that were significantly far away from any of the Trademark Office's premises, so the plaintiff had to incur very high costs related to the travel expenses of not only their lawyers, but also the Trademark Office representatives. These costs have now virtually disappeared given that the use of virtual diligences of inspection are now possible.

In conclusion, the pandemic has forced the Peruvian Trademark Office to digitalize its procedures, making our system a much more efficient one. By combining this with the increased efficiency of trademark protection in Peru (protection that has to be guaranteed in order for new companies to invest in Peru), as well as the strong economic recovery we are expecting, it is safe to say that Peru should continue to be one of the fastest growing economies in Latin America and that intellectual property rights of all incoming companies will be adequately protected.

Although the Peruvian trademark legislation has not changed, the digitalization of the existing procedures has allowed for it to become more efficient. In turn this has helped in not only obtaining a faster registration procedure, but also a better protection of trademark rights in the Peruvian territory.

Authors: Alfredo Barreda and Gonzalo Barreda