The most valuable assets are IP rights

By Francisco Espinosa Bellido

To deepen through the reality, ideas and goals of IP in Latin America, Marcasur International interviews professionals and firms from the entire region. On this edition we talk with Francisco Espinosa Reboa.

Partner of Francisco Espinosa Bellido Abogados, the 41 year old Peruvian lawyer says IP regulation is strong in his country, although the majority of Latin America´s countries still need improvement in public policies.

What are the goals of your firm in the short and long term?

In the short term we would like to keep strengthening areas that complement our main and core areas, which are trademark prosecution, trademark litigation and patent prosecution and litigation. Particularly, we would like to continue growing on trademark infringement litigation, border measures and copyright litigation, as well as unfair competition.

In the long term, keep growing in work and clients without compromising the quality of our services, our personalized relationship and communication with clients and our overall balance in size and organization.

Does your country provide enough importance to IP?

Laws are strong enough, and we are signatories of some of the main international IP treaties. Likewise, administrative institutions that deal with IP are also specialized and have a fair amount of faculties and resources.

However the judicial system is not specialized on IP and lacks resources. Also, Peruvians do not have a strong culture of protection and respect to IP rights. In that regard, there is still a large amount of infringements against IP rights, mainly copyrights, and our culture of development and protection of technology and IP rights is too basic and underdeveloped.

How much has technology changed the profession?

I started working on IP matters when email was still not used and communications were done by fax or mail. Obviously, as with every other area, technology has changed the way we communicate, and in our case we try to give quick and complete responses, so the pressure is constant in order to provide immediate response to our clients.

Fortunately our system allows us to deal with all communications received during business hours, on the same day they are received.

We are also able to use some current tools such as online trademark filings, online consultation of trademark and patent files and registrations, online access to trademark and patent case law and resolutions, etc.

It´s easier to work with foreign clients and markets?

Absolutely. In our area personal communication (client visiting our offices) is uncommon, so for us it is almost identical the way we deal with foreign and local clients, and our time of response is basically the same on both cases.

The main differences may be with clients in Europe and Asia which have an important time difference with Peru, in which cases it is less likely to maintain a fluid and long exchange of emails during the same day, in case that is needed.

Patents, domain, Internet piracy and other issues have increased IP influence areas. Does that generate an increasing specialization in the firms and the professionals?

Of course. Patent specialization has been required for many years now, but areas such as domain names, infringement of IP rights over the internet, new forms of advertising, border measures, etc, require specific specialization that fortunately we have been able to acquire through client work and case law study, and we are able to deal with those cases both for client counseling, client strategy and also on our litigation services.

Will IP be one of the top Law branches in nearby future?

It clearly is now. It is common knowledge that the most valuable assets in almost any worldwide company today are IP rights, being trademarks, patents, trade secrets, and even know how and goodwill.

The real question for Latin American countries, companies and law firms is how long it may take for us to increase our capacity to develop more sophisticated IP rights (and goods and services) with added value, which can make us more competitive in the worldwide markets.

There are already important efforts and advances in that regard, particularly in some countries, but the majority of Latin America´s countries still need much improvement in public policies, education and overall “creative culture” to become real producers of more advanced IP rights.