Characteristics and Legislation
Register a Spanish Patent
Patents in Spain
Patent Registrar
PATENT (Act 11/1986)
All inventions or discoveries, improvements and refinements made to existing items, as well as manufacturing processes, are eligible for registration.
They are patentable
All inventions, discoveries, manufacturing processes and improvements made to existing items, provided that they meet three requirements:
- ABSOLUTELY OR GLOBALLY UNPUBLISHED: they must not have been made public either in Spain or abroad prior to the date of application.
- It must possess INVENTIVE STEP, that is to say, IT MUST NOT BE AN OBVIOUS SOLUTION TO A PROBLEM for a person skilled in the art.
- THAT IT IS CAPABLE OF INDUSTRIAL APPLICATION: that the subject-matter of the patent can be manufactured or used in some branch of industry.
In order to protect improvements made to a main patent, ‘ADDITIONAL CERTIFICATES’ may be applied for; these have the same legal standing as the main patent, and a single patent may have up to three such additions throughout its legal term.
The following may not be the subject of a patent
- Discoveries, scientific theories and mathematical methods.
- Literary or artistic works or any other aesthetic creation, as well as scientific works.
- Plans, rules and methods for games and for carrying out activities.
- Intelectuales, económico-comerciales, así como los programas de ordenador.
- Ways of presenting information.
- Surgical or therapeutic treatment methods and diagnostic methods are not covered, but the apparatus or instruments used to carry out such methods are.
- Plant varieties, animal breeds, and biological processes for the production of plants or animals (this does not apply to microbiological processes or to products obtained by such processes).
Features
Spanish patents
Payments
An annual maintenance fee that increases over the course of its validity period; failure to pay this fee would result in the expiry of the application and the consequent loss of the rights it confers.
Duration
20 years, which cannot be extended, counted from the date of filing of the application, after which it enters the public domain.
Priority
From the date of application.
International Priority
Filing a patent application grants the applicant a ONE-YEAR priority period to file the application as a new invention in any of the countries of the Paris Convention (almost all countries worldwide) from the date of filing.
Report on the state of the art
Spanish patents
New Patents Act
Under the new Patents Act (Official State Gazette No. 177 of Saturday 25 July 2015 publishes Act 24/2015 of 24 July on Patents, which will come into force on 1 April 2017), the procedure for requesting the Prior Art Report (IET) has been affected; consequently, under this new Act, it is mandatory to request the PSR at the time of filing the application.
EQUIPMENT
This new Act brings Spanish patent legislation into line with international standards and strengthens the national patent system, establishing a legal framework that prioritises genuinely inventive and novel activity, and introducing a single grant procedure that will enhance legal certainty for applicants and improve the image of the Spanish patent system.