SPAIN
December 04, 2017
It has already been more than half a year since the new Patent Law in Spain came into force. This allows us to carry out, although with a small sample size, a first balance of the predictions that, in turn, were made about the trend of the requests.
Two of the main changes introduced, if not the most important ones, are the obligatory nature of the substantive examination for patent applications (farewell to the granting of patents without having been examined) and the extension of the subject matter protected by utility model (these without examination). The forecast was that, after the entry into force, there would be a notable reduction in the number of patent applications, accompanied by the corresponding transfer to utility model applications. The data available so far indicates that there has indeed been a decrease in the number of patent applications and that the alleged transfer to utility models is not so clear. It may still be early, though, to extract definite conclusions as to the future trends in the country and we will have to continue waiting for a more solid hypothesis.