Faq's

Patents are industrial property rights that are granted for the exclusive use of inventions (new solutions for specific technical problems).

In other words, they may be seen as a contract between the State and the applicant by which the latter acquires the exclusive right to produce and sell an invention, in exchange for fully disclosing the invention to the public.  Patents can be granted to any type of invention in any field of technology, whether it is a product or a process, as well as for new processes for obtaining products, substances or compounds which already exist.

The duration of a patent is 20 years, starting from the filing or priority date.

Maintenance fees for patents are payable yearly, and should be requested during the final six months of the validity period. If a renewal request is submitted after this period (but no longer than six months later), an additional fee is due.

Although the requirements for protection are very similar for utility models, this type of protection is not available for inventions dealing with biological material or chemical and pharmaceutical substances or processes.

The duration of a utility model is 6 years, starting from the filing or priority date, but this period can be extended. During the final six months of the validity period, the owner can request an extension for a period of two years, and during the final six months of this supplementary period, a second and final request for extension of the protection period can be made, again for a period of two years.

The duration of a utility model, together with its two extensions, cannot exceed 10 years, starting from the date the initial application was filed.

Maintenance fees utility models are payable yearly, and should be requested during the final six months of the validity period. If a renewal request is submitted after this period (but no longer than six months later), an additional fee is due.

The state of the art includes everything that has been disclosed or made available to the public through description, use or any other means, before the date of the patent or utility model application, or the date of its right of priority. The state of the art includes also all patent or utility model applications that have been filed in the country where protection is being sought, even if they have not yet been published.

Protection can be awarded for inventions that fulfil all of the following three criteria:

Novelty

In this context, the expression ‘novelty’ means that it is not part of the state of the art. An invention is not considered to have been disclosed to the public if there has been a clear abuse of the inventor's rights or if it was unduly published by the National Institute of Industrial Property. It is also not considered to harm novelty any disclosure made by means of any communication made to international exhibitions if three conditions are fulfilled, namely:

• The disclosure must be made by the applicant/inventor himself;
• The disclosure must be made within a period of no longer than 6 months before the application;
• The disclosure must be indicated on the patent or utility model application form (referring to the date when it took place) and confirmed by the attachment of a document that certifies the disclosure. If you still do not have such a document, you have a period of 1 to 2 months to add it to your application.

Inventive step

In the case of patents, an invention is considered as involving an inventive step if, taking into account the state of the art, it is not obvious to a person skilled in the art.

In the case of utility models, an invention is considered as involving an inventive step if it is not an obvious result of the state of the art or if it represents a practical or technical advantage for the manufacture or use of the product or process in question.

In this way, inventions that cannot be protected by patent, due to a clear lack of an inventive step, may be eligible for protection as a utility model if they confer a practical or technical advantage, as outlined above.

Industrial applicability

An invention is considered to be an industrially applicable when its object can be made or used in any kind of industry, including agriculture.

The following cannot be protected by patent:

• Discoveries, as well as scientific theories and mathematical methods;
• Materials or substances that already exist in nature, and nuclear materials;
• Aesthetic creations;
• Projects, principles or methods of carrying out intellectual activities in the area of games, or in the field of economic activities, as well as computer programs, as such, without any contribution;
• Presentations of information;
• Methods of surgical or therapeutic treatment, as well as methods of diagnosis, for both humans and animals. However, products, substances or compounds used in these methods can be protected.

It is also not possible to get protection for:

Inventions whose commercial exploitation is against the law, public order, public health or good morals, namely:

• Processes for cloning human beings;
• Processes for modifying the initial genetic identity of a human being;
• Uses of human embryos for industrial or commercial ends;
• Processes for modifying the genetic identity of animals in such a way as to cause them needless suffering that has no substantial medical benefit for man or animals, as well as animals obtained through these processes;
• The human body, in various stages of its formation and development, as well as the simple discovery of one of its elements, including the total or partial sequence of a gene, except for the special cases outlined in law;
• Plant varieties or animal breeds, as well as essentially biological processes for obtaining plants or animals.

A Patent can be used to protect an invention that provides a new solution to a specific technical problem, for example a medicine, a machine for stripping the bark from cork oak trees, a process for moulding plastics, a chemical process for the purification of proteins, or the use of a certain molecule for the manufacture of a pharmaceutical compound. 

Protecting an invention by means of a Utility Model involves an administrative procedure that is faster and simpler than the process of applying for a patent.  However, this type of protection is weaker and cannot be awarded to inventions dealing with biological material or chemical and pharmaceutical substances or processes.

The provisional application aims to guarantee the priority of the registration and can be used when the applicant has not yet managed to gather the necessary elements for processing the application. By submitting a provisional patent application, the applicant may complete his application, submitting the missing elements a posteriori within a period of 12 months. The provisional application can be only accompanied by the identification of the applicant and the inventor, the name of the invention and a document containing a brief description of the invention.

The minimum time is 21 months from the filling date.

The minimum time is 9 months from the filling date.

The European patent can be valid in 36 countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Spain, Finland, France, United Kingdom, Greece, Croatia, Hungary, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Monaco, Republic of Macedonia, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia, San Marino and Turkey.

A Trade Mark is a sign that identifies a company’s products or services in the marketplace, and distinguishes them from those of other companies.

With the registration of the trademark, its owner now holds an exclusive right that will allow him to prevent third parties from using, without his consent, an equal or similar sign to his own, in identical or similar products or services.

Registration also makes it possible to value the financial investment, as well as the effort and intellectual capacity expended by its owner in creating the brand.

The registered trademark entitles the holder of the registration to use the indications "registered trademark" or ®, thus dissuading potential infringers.

It allows your registration to be transferred, or for exploration licenses to be granted to third parties, either for consideration or free of charge.

It is also advisable to register a trademark, whenever it marks products intended for export, to be carried out both in the country of origin, and fundamentally in the country of destination, to ensure that the existence of prior rights of third parties in the country of origin will not impede the use of the trademark in that country.

Taking into account the visibility that the products and their brands will have through this means of sale, it is also advisable to register a trademark, whenever it is intended to mark products to be sold over the internet, at least in the country where the company responsible for its production and/or marketing.

Trade Marks can assume a variety of forms:

• Verbal Trade Marks: these comprise verbal elements only, namely words, letters or numbers. They may also include names of persons.
• Pictorial Trade Marks: these are composed of pictorial elements only, such as drawings, images or figures.
• Mixed Trade Marks: these are composed of verbal and pictorial elements.
• Sound Trade Marks: these are composed of sounds.
• Three-dimensional Trade Marks: these comprise the shape of the product or its packaging.
• Slogans: advertising slogans can be registered, independently of any Copyright protection they may have.

It is not possible to register Trade Marks that are exclusively, or essentially, composed of terms that describe the product or service (its characteristics, qualities, geographical origin, or other such aspects). Also inadmissible are those consisting of terms that have become customary in business, of certain shapes (a shape resulting from the nature of the product itself, a shape required to obtain a certain technical result, or a shape that gives the product its own substantial value), or of a single colour.

Whenever these elements – that cannot be protected per se - are combined with other distinctive or fanciful elements (words or pictures, for example), the Trade Mark can be registered. However, the descriptive, generic or common parts of the Trade Mark will not be the exclusive property of the holder.

It is not possible to register Trade Marks that may mislead the consumer, namely with regard to the nature, qualities, use or origin of the product or service.

Trade Marks that are against the law and public order, or that offend morality and proper behaviour.

Trade Marks that contain symbols of State, emblems of government or foreign organizations, coats of arms, medals, names or portraits of people, or signs possessing a high degree of symbolic value (such as religious symbols), amongst others (except with the permission of the relevant parties).

Trade Marks that constitute a violation of another person's rights or that might favour acts of unfair competition.

It is not possible to register Trade Marks that that are a reproduction or imitation of previously registered signs (except with the consent of the owner).

Before proceeding with the registration of a trademark, the applicant must carry out research to try to assess the feasibility of registering the trademark he intends to register, as well as to make an assessment of any risks that may exist in relation to existing private rights. It is entirely advisable that the applicant, before proceeding with the trademark application, resort to the services of an official industrial property agent, who will give him all the advice and legal and administrative support necessary for the entire process.

A Trade Mark registration is not granted automatically. The application process begins once the application is submitted, and includes an examination in accordance with the rules governing the composition of Trade Marks. The application is published online in the Industrial Property Bulletin, and there then follows an opposition phase. The examination is carried out at the end of this period and after which the final decision is published. Once this process is complete – and if no grounds for refusal are found - the Trade Mark is protected.

The registration is valid for 10 years, counting from the date of the grant. This period is renewable indefinitely for further periods of equal length.

From the outset, trademark registration lapses automatically if it is not renewed.

Trademark registration may still expire:

• For lack of serious use for five consecutive years, unless there is a just cause;
• If the brand has become the usual name of the product or service for which it was registered;
• If the brand is likely to mislead the public, namely about the nature, quality and geographic origin of the products or services.

It is a unique trademark, which will be valid and which will take effect in all countries of the European Union.

The registration of a CTM can take an average of about a year and a half, in the event that no opposition arises.

It's not possible. There are systems both at an international and at a regional level that allow the registration of a trademark in a more or less broad group of countries. As a rule, each country has a competent administrative entity, equivalent to our INPI, to carry out industrial property registrations.

Only legal persons, public entities, individual entrepreneurs, self-employed professionals and also applicants or owners of trademarks, presented through national, community or international channels, can register directly in their name, “.pt” domains.

A logotype is the most suitable sign to identify an entity which provides services or commercial products, distinguishing from others, and which could be used in establishments, advertising and correspondence. It is the way by which an entity chooses to be identified.

The registration is valid for 10 years, counting from the date of the grant. This period is renewable indefinitely for further periods of equal length.

An ‘industrial design’ protects the visual features of the whole, or a part, of a product. These features could include elements such as the lines, contours, colours, shape, texture or materials of the product itself or of its decoration.

It is not possible to obtain protection for computer programs, products dictated solely by their technical function, communications products, products with a design that goes against public order or good morals, and designs that do not exhibit novelty and distinctive character.

The registration is valid for 5 years, starting from the date of the application, and can be renewed for further periods of 5 years each up to a maximum of 25 years.

It is possible to register industrial designs that meet both of the following two conditions:

The ‘industrial design’ must be new

An industrial design is considered new if there has been no disclosure to the public (through sale, fairs or exhibitions, magazines, catalogues, etc) of an identical industrial design before the registration application date.

The following three conditions should be fulfilled for disclosure not to invalidate registration:

• It must be made by the creator of the industrial design;
• It must be made within a period of no longer than 12 months before the application for registration;
• It must be indicated on the application form.

The ‘industrial design’ must have distinctive character

An industrial design has distinctive character if it is not confused with any other earlier product. It is possible to register industrial designs which, while not being entirely new, make new combinations of known elements.

Industrial designs applications can be simple or multiple:

• A simple application is composed of a single object, or of a set of products that cannot be separated (such as a set of draughts, or a pack of cards).
• A multiple application can include up to 100 products, as long as they belong to the same class considered at the Locarno International Classification. Each of the objects included in a multiple registration must fulfill the industrial design requirements. The different products are treated independently, and so registration can be granted or refused for only some of the products that comprise a multiple application.

It is a single registration that covers all the States of the European Union.

The same application may include as many variants as desired, as long as they belong to the same class.

The validity of the registration is 5 years, counting from the date of application, and the registration may be renewed, for periods of 5 years (quinquenniums), up to a limit of 25 years.

An industrial design registration is not granted automatically. The application process begins once the application is submitted, and may include an examination in accordance with the rules governing the composition of industrial design.

Once an application is filed, within a month, it is submitted to a formal examination and to an examination concerning the limitations of the product and then published online in the Industrial Property Bulletin. At the time of application, the applicant can request the delay of the publication until a period of 30 months.

Following the publication of the application there begins a two-month opposition phase during which anyone who feels they may suffer loss as a result of the award can file a complaint.

If a complaint has been filed the application is submitted to an examination is made regarding the grounds for refusal presented in the complain. At the end of this process the notification of award, refusal, or partial award is issued accordingly. In case of no complain has been filed, the award is partially or totally issued.