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Patent News in Colombia

The Colombian Government has recently adopted new policies in order to develop the patent prosecution system in a most cost and efficient way. All efforts have been implemented to encourage local and foreign companies to apply for the protection of their IP rights, especially in patents the most significant and practical changes are the following.
As for the formal requirements, the anti-paper law has been recently applied in Colombia. Said law presumes the good faith in the actions of individuals and it has been applied with the purpose of allowing the applicant to have his/her patent prosecution in a more time and cost efficient manner.

The main rules that apply in the patent prosecution matters are the following:

No legalizations are required. Scanned copy of the documents is sufficed. This rule does not apply for the certified copy of the priority applications.
The PTO is not allowed to request documents that are already in its files.
No evidence of a change of name of the applicant must be submitted. This rule also applies for the recordal of a change of address or domicile.
Carrying out administrative procedures online. However, this tool has not yet to be implemented at all in the PTO for patent prosecution matters.
In addition, the Colombian PTO is taking advantage of the formal examination that takes place in the international phase. Thus, the examiner won’t require the assignment document in all cases in which it can be consulted directly from the WIPOs database.

Reduction in the patent prosecution time
The prosecution time of a patent application has significantly decreased as the PTO is now issuing just one examination report related to the technical aspects of the invention. On the other hand, additional staff has been recruited to accelerate the process.

Amendments to the set of claims and divisional applications
The time to file amendments to the set of claims and/ or divisional applications has been extended, allowing the applicant to take these actions when filing legal remedies against the first resolution that denies or partially denies a patent application.

Crescencio Villaseñor