Tavira y Botella

PRESS NOTE

 Lupicinio Eversheds and Tavira & Botella announce their alliance in order to offer an integral counselling and consulting service in the field of patents and trademarks.

 Lupicinio Eversheds and Tavira & Botella are taking a great strategic decision and are introducing in the market an integral counselling and consulting service on matters referred to patents and trademarks which comprises, not only the fulfilment of legal principles but also the design of registration strategy and administrative defence related to intellectual and industrial property defence.

 In its decisive compromise in favour of the development and consolidation of strategic areas of the firm, Lupicinio Eversheds complements its Intellectual and Industrial Property Department with the experience in counselling and consulting offered by Tavira & Botella. The above mentioned Department of the firm Lupicino Eversheds is very much oriented to the protection of intellectual property in general and the innovating pharmaceutical industry in particular.

 Lupicinio Eversheds and Tavira & Botella will give altogether an integral counselling service for the intellectual and industrial property legal protection. Legal counsellors of very well known prestige and industrial property agents backed up by an important professional background, provide a complete know-how with a high technical level and an exact knowledge of the problems handled in the sector, in order to cover the specific aspects in matters related to registration, administrative defence and legal counselling which are required for the defence of intellectual and industrial property in the national and international scope.

 In this way the first phase of close collaboration is starting between both Firms in which they will work intensively in order to reach a total teamwork of the respective legal teams, technicians and marketing personnel in order to give an answer, with all available guarantees, to the increasing demand of this type of counselling service in this sector.

 Lupicinio Eversheds and Tavira & Botella are very conscious of the importance of having a multi-disciplinary Team which will support the companies in the design of legal and marketing strategies which would best serve their interests and would be best applied to their projects with the strong intention of preventing and reducing to a minimum the risks derived from a deficient legal protection of their specific properties.

 Kiko Carrión, Managing Partner of Lupicinio Eversheds Intellectual and Industrial Property Department and promoter of this initiative, remarks: “Our consolidated experience in the field of specific properties, long time ago was suggesting us the suitability of having a high level industrial property agent firm which would actively participate in the management and coordination of intellectual and industrial property projects of our clients and which would understand the sector challenges. We have found in Tavira & Botella a technical complement and service dedication in order to offer our clients complete and efficient answers and above all compromised with the defence of the assets and in short with the future of their projects”.

 Lupicinio Rodriguez, Founding Partner of Lupicinio Eversheds, insists on the importance of incorporating technicians that complement more and more the sophisticated present problems related to our clients and this trend being confirmed in its business activity model, which ended with Pedro Mielgo as new collaborator, ex-president of Red Eléctrica. “This step, which is not the last one, confirms the success of our strategy of consolidation and the convincing success of our integration in Eversheds. Eversheds has created new and attractive models of business law. The business law of the future requires the collaboration of different professional activities from the specialization point of view in order to offer ambitious answers with quality and to be coherent with the activity developed by our clients.”

 Juan and Antonio Botella, managing partners of Tavira & Botella, Agents of the Industrial Property, make emphasis in the increasing importance that the legal defence of the trademarks and patents rights of their clients have, whereby with this alliance they reinforce the legal area, both at national as well as international level: “Lupicinio Eversheds guarantees Tavira & Botella, with the collaboration of their best professional staff, the set of ideas which was established by our grandfather in 1921 when the firm was founded by him: personal and professional attention for the solution of problems.”

Modification of the periods for the payment of rates in relation to Industrial Property [10 /11 / 99]

They will come into force on January 1, 2000.
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Royal Decree 1595/1999, dated October 15, under which the periods for certain payment of rates in reference to Industrial Property are established.

1.- First article. Annuity payments.

The Article 82 of Patent Regulations for the application of Act 11/1966, dated March 20, passed by Royal Decree 22451986, dated October 10, states the following:

"The annuities required to keep a patent or utility model valid shall be paid annually in advance through its validity.

The expiry date for each annuity will be the last day of the same month as the application filing date, fixed according to the provisions of Articles14 and 41 of this Ruling. In the event of this being subject to variation, the last one will be considered.

The payment will be made during the three months prior to the expiry date or during the month following to that date.

After the period has expired for the payment of an annuity without the amount due being paid, it may be paid with a 25 percent surcharge within the first three months and a 50 percent surcharge within the next three months, up to a maximum of six months delay. Nevertheless, in the period running up to the expiry date for the following annuity, the payment can be regularized paying a rate equivalent to the amount for the twentieth annuity in the case of patents, and equivalent to the amount for the tenth annuity in the case of utility models".

2.- Second article. European Patent annuity payment.

Article 17 of Royal Decree 2424/1986, dated October 10, concerning the application of the Agreement on the granting of European Patents, signed in Munich on October 5, 1973, finally states the followING:

"For all European patents which have APPLY Spain, the annual rates envisaged in the present legislation for national patents should be paid to the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office.

The annuities will be required as from the year after the one in which the granting of the European patent was published in the "European Patent Bulletin".

The payment of the annuities should be made applying the system of expiry date, term, quantity, form and other conditions contained in the present legislation for national patents".

Sole Transitional Provision. Maintenance payment for the second quinquenniums.

1.- Up to the first renewal that takes place after Act 14/1999 dated May 4 came into force, in reference to Rates and Public Prices for services rendered by the Nuclear Security Council, the trademarks and commercial names already granted will be subject to the payment of the corresponding quinquenniums under expiry sanction.

2.- For payment purposes, the expiry date for the second quinquennium will be the last day of the month of the fifth anniversary of the registration date of the initial application filing, the payment concerned shall be made within the three months prior to the expiry date or in the month following that date.

3.- If the period for the payment of the quinquennium expires, without the amount being paid, it shall be paid with a 25 percent surcharge within the first three months and with a 50 percent surcharge within the following three months, up to a maximum delay of six month.

IMPORTANT News: Trademark Law Modification             [05-05-99]

ACT 14/1999 dated May 4, concerning Rates and Public Prices for services rendered by the Nuclear Security Council, AS from the seventh additional provision, has made some important modifications to the Trademark Law 32/1988, dated November 10; owing to the importance of their contents, the following points must take into consideration:

1. The payments due for the quinquenniums are cancelled???. Nevertheless, until the first renewal, after this Act (5-5-99) comes into force, the trademarks and commercial names already granted will be subject to the payment of the corresponding quinquenniums under expiry sanction according to the legal text in force at the time of its granting or last renewal.

2. After the granting of the registration of a trademark the payment of a registration rate will be made as from one month after the publication of its granting, the effectiveness of the granting will be subject to the payment of the registration rate.

3. The trademarks and commercial names, whose granting would have been published after the current Act (5-5-99) came into force, shall be subject to the payment of the registration rate.

4.- The trademarks and commercial names, whose renewal would have been requested after the current Act (5-5-99) came into force, shall be subject to the payment of the renewal rate.

As a result of the above-mentioned, once the granting of a trademark is published as from the official bulletin dated May 16, 1999, it will be granted for a period of 10 years without payment of the quinquenniums but with a payment for the registration rights, and the requested renewals as from May 5, 1999 shall pay a renewal rate.

We remain at your service for any other information that you may need and we take this opportunity to send you our best regards.

Sincerely yours

TAVIRA Y BOTELLA