Protecting and exploiting your IP assets in South America with a special focus on Brazil

MERCOSUR is an abbreviation for Mercado Común del Sur or Common Market of the South. It is a free trade zone in South America established by the Treaty of Asunción on 26 March 1991 between the governments of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. The founding members have been joined by Venezuela and Bolivia is in the process of acceding to the treaty. Most of the other countries of South America are associate members.

With a combined population of over 295 million in a land area of nearly 15 million square kilometres MERCOSUR is an important trading partner for the UK and other EU member states. To assist small and medium enterprises that wish to do business with the region the European Commission funds the MERCOSUR IPR SME Helpdesk. Like the other SME IPR Helpdesks this is a joint venture between universities and intellectual property offices in Europe and South America.

The Helpdesk offers a range of services including SME clinics and workshops. It is not every day that a clinic or workshop is held in the United Kingdom and it is even less common for one to be held in Yorkshire but on 6 March 2015 at 13:00 there will be a workshop in Hull on Protecting and exploiting your IP assets in South America with a special focus on Brazil. The workshop will take place at the World Trade Centre Hull & Humber, 48 Queen Street, Hull, HU1 1UU. Admission is free but it is necessary to register through Eventbrite in advance. I am grateful to Dr Alison Orr of Inngot Ltd., who will be speaking at the event, for drawing it to my attention.

Dr Orr will be speaking on Using your IP to Take off Internationally: Protecting and Exploiting Your Assets in International Collaborations. She will be followed by Alexandra Fezer of Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum who will discuss the Helpdesk and its services. Hicham Abghay also of Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum will speak on Latin American business co-operation. Hiago Busch of Baylos Abogados will give the main talk on Intellectual Property Rights in Latin America with a special focus on Brazil. That will cover 

• General Overview of IP in the MERCOSUR region and Chile 
• IP Protection Rules: Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights 
• IP Exploitation: Licensing, IP Valuation, Start-ups creation 
• IP Enforcement: Counterfeiting, IP Rights registration.

Latin America is an area in which we are particularly interested with the upcoming Olympic Games next year as sports law is one of our specialisms. If you are going to the workshop (or even of you are not) you should find our overview on the law of Brazil helpful,  If you want further information give me a call on 01484 599090 or use my contact form.

Practising the Dark Arts in Leeds and Sheffield - roll up to be enlightened

Leeds Inventors Group

A patent is granted for inventions that are new and involve an inventive step.   An invention may be new to you and to everyone else you know but if someone somewhere in the world dreamed it up before you, you don't get your patent. If by some chance you do get a patent and your invention turns out not to have been new you stand to lose your patent despite the fortune you may have paid in professional, official and renewal fees to get it. So searching should be important to every inventor.

Searching should also be important to anyone who may be accused of infringing the patent. If he or she finds that the invention has been anticipated or that it was obvious then the patent would be invalid. And if the patent is invalid there is nothing to infringe.

Searching for patents is a dark art practised by patent agents, librarians examiners and others at midnight on moonless nights in Armley cemetery with their familiar (an immortal cat called Ginger who is himself something of an inventor) after dancing anti-clockwise round a computer in a pentagon.

However, two of them have broken ranks.  Ged and Stef will share their secrets with you at a Patent Searching Workshop at 18:00 this evening at Leeds Central Library. There are still one or two places left so if you want to find out about this topic then now's your chance. You can register for the event through Eventbrite and I hope that at least some of my instructing solicitors will do just that.

Sheffield Inventors Group has already had its July meeting - a fascinating talk by Pat Ross of Creative Genie on identifying your USP. Another dark art perhaps.   You can find my write-up at "Identifying your USP - the Overlap between Design and Invention" 9 July 2013 Inventors Club