El Salvador approves a new Intellectual Property Law

The Caribean country creates ISPI, centralizes IP rights protection, and updates patent exclusions.

The new Intellectual Property Law, recently approved by the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador, creates the Salvadoran Institute of Intellectual Property (ISPI), an entity that will be responsible for processing applications for intellectual property titles, supervising the use of works, interpretations and protected productions and mediate conflicts between rights holders. These functions are currently performed by the Intellectual Property Registry.

This new law establishes a single legal framework for the protection and observance of intellectual property rights and other industrial rights and privileges. This new law is important, among other aspects, to provide El Salvador with legislation consistent with the commitments signed in the International Treaties within the scope of the World Intellectual Property Organization, the World Trade Organization and Trade Agreements, which contain commitments regarding intellectual property rights.

Patent News

Among the notable news in patent matters, the new law expands the list of subjects excluded from protection in its article 197 to “Animal breeds or essentially biological processes for the production of plants and animals, other than microbiological procedures” and includes expressly, in comparison with the previous 1993 Law, the exclusion of “Products or procedures already patented due to the fact that they are attributed a use other than that included in the original patent.”

In addition, this law includes the express definition of the Bolar Exception in its article 209.

Another relevant novelty is the possibility of paying a rehabilitation fee, according to article 273, which gives the possibility of rehabilitating an expired patent or utility model due to non-payment of the annual maintenance fee within 6 months following expiration of the contemplated term of the grace period.

The term of protection of Industrial Designs is also extended to 15 years, with payment of five-year maintenance fees, and the possibility of rehabilitating an industrial design.

Other notable changes

This new body of law contains notorious changes in trademarks and other distinctive signs, including the definition of trademark, requirements for the accreditation of a notorious trademark; the extension of trademark protection was agreed upon. The protection of other non-traditional signs such as flavor, relief and texture marks was also extended.

In turn, through this law, applicants for those distinctive signs that include a generic or country code top-level domain name will have to justify the use of the domain name.

This law will come into force on February 16, 2025.

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