The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, in Lisbon, will host until tomorrow the 1st Congress of Intellectual Property, an event with the participation of several speakers, from various areas of the industry.
The opening of the initiative took place this morning in a session on the theme «Intellectual Property and the Knowledge Economy». João Tiago Silveira, Secretary of State for Justice, was the speaker invited to speak at the session, making known some data related to the registration of trademarks and patents online in Portugal.
Starting by stressing the importance that intellectual property registrations have for economic development and investment protection, João Tiago Silveira pointed out that in the first four months of this year 92 percent of trademark applications were filed in Portugal through the Marca service just in time. The same percentage was also obtained on the Patente na Hora platform.
The Secretary of State also stressed that the creation of these systems online marked the difference in Portugal, as they «facilitated the bureaucratic processes involved and contributed to the reduction of registration deadlines». This is because, «in 2005 it took 12 months to register. Now it takes 4 months», he added, referring that we match Ireland in terms of the speed of registration and that the goal is to make this period even shorter.
The volume of registration requests makes Portugal one of the countries with the most registered trademarks per capita, João Tiago Silveira said, greeting the Portuguese for «knowing the importance of trademark registrations as a way to protect their value, innovation and expansion».
The goal for the 2008/2009 period, according to the Secretary of State, is to continue to eliminate costs, formalities and deadlines for the protection of innovation and value, to adopt the processes provided for in the Simplex for this area and to take advantage of the decree-law that comes into force in October this year, in which it is foreseen the elimination of bureaucracies, the creation of a new figure that will allow to apply for a patent on a provisional basis giving the applicant a period of 12 months to decide whether or not to proceed with the complete application patent. The creation of an arbitration center to decide litigious aspects related to intellectual property is another project planned for next year.
João Tiago Silveira ended his speech by talking about community trademark registrations, stressing that national SMEs need lower values to internationalize and protect their brands at community level. This is because registration for European territory costs between 2 thousand and 3 thousand euros.
Portugal in the world
João Picoito, an engineer at Nokia Siemens Networks, also a guest at the first session of the day, said that in 2005, Portugal was at the end of the pack when it came to property registration. At the time, there were only 5 patents registered per million inhabitants, which contrasted with ratios from other countries, where the number of registrations went, in some cases, to tens per million inhabitants. In the opinion of the speaker, this indicator showed the lack of national innovation and collective effort due to the monitoring of development.
During his speech, he also spoke about the Lisbon Agenda and Portugal’s position vis-à-vis the other markets, characterizing our country as one of those that belong to the group of «catching up«of community development. João Picoto showed some international data where it was verified that, while the investment in European R&D is in the 1.84 percent of the GDP, with 1 percent reimbursed by the States, in the United States that budget goes up to 2, 67 per cent and Japan at 3.17 per cent In the case of Portugal, investment in this area is one percentage point over the value of GDP, with the State financing 80 per cent of the value.
These values lead the Nokia Siemens Networks engineer to recommend greater commitment from the private segment in the country’s economic dynamism and to alert to the need to protect the values created internally in order to be able to internationalize them.
Finally, the closing of the first morning session was in charge of Luís Valadares Tavares, professor at IST, who stressed the fact that the new development cycle has information as the basis that generates the knowledge that leads to innovation and performance. The professor stressed that current priorities should be based on greater productivity, contemplating stimulus policies, feeding sectoral innovation clusters and supporting intellectual property rights.
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