Uruguay reaffirms protection of IP rights

By Pittaluga Abogados

Uruguay is the only South American country that doesn´t appear in the watch lists of the 2013 Special 301 Report, an annual study prepared by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) to identify those United States commercial partners that don´t have efficient protection for Intellectual Property rights.

The 2013 Special 301 Report studied a total of 95 countries, placing 9 of them on the “Priority Watch List”, with critical IP deficiencies, and 32 on the “Watch List”, with important yet not critical IP deficiencies.

Since 2006 Uruguay hasn´t been included on either list, a fact that exhibits the country growing attention and corrective measures to prevent any type of IP irregularities related to trademarks, patents, counterfeiting, piracy or Internet IP, among others.

Uruguay was on the “Priority Watch List” in 2001 and 2002 and on the “Watch List” on 1999, 2000 and 2003. Things have change since 2003 when Uruguay approved copyright law 17.616, which introduced modifications to existent law 9.739 from 1998.

“This is positive and shows both the effectiveness that Uruguayan laws have on IP rights and the successful collaboration between Uruguayan and United States authorities”, a US diplomatic source explained to El País newspaper.

According to the study, the problems of trademark counterfeiting and copyright piracy involve “the mass production of goods like semiconductors, medicines, health care products, food and beverages, automobile parts, aircraft parts, apparel and footwear, electronics, batteries, chemicals, sporting goods, motion pictures and music”.

The report also warns of Internet IP violations such as websites that link to infringing content, unauthorized retransmission of live sports telecasts and commercialization of devices pre-loaded with illegal content, like mobile telephones, tablets and flash drives.