Between April 25 and 28, 2011, the First Seminar of Cooperation on Project Reviews PROSUR 2011 funded by the World Organization of Industrial Property (OMPI) was held in Santiago, Chile.

This seminar was part of the project “Regional Cooperation System on Industrial Property” better known as PROSUR, a joint initiative of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Surinam. This project aims to confront the widespread problem that patent offices in the region face: the increase in the number of patent applications filed and in their technical complexity.

Indeed, with the continuous development of technology, there has been a proliferation of patent applications, which must be processed in a timely and prudent manner by patent offices, so as not to slow down the interests of applicants.

The Regional Projects Coordinator of OMPI, Paulo Agostinho said: “PROSUR was basically born with the aim of sharing work among Latin American offices in order to meet an increasing number of applications at a  reasonable cost while maintaining the quality of the analysis".

For this purpose, the patent offices of the participating countries will seek to draw on the experiences of their peers, sharing search reports and patentability reports in a non-binding manner. This aspect has been emphasized by Maximiliano Santa Cruz, National Director of the National Institute of Industrial Property (INAPI), who said that “for this pilot plan to work, it must be developed in compliance with the laws and sovereignty of each country.

The exchange of reports will not be binding and will only be made in order to utilize the work done by other offices, to thus considerably reduce their processing times”.

One of the PROSUR Project development goals is the training of those working in patent offices in the participating countries.The Seminar of Regional Cooperation in Industrial Property held in Chile was a first example. In this instance, the mechanical and biotechnological field examiners of patent offices will be able to share experiences relative to expediting patent procedures and can become familiar with technological tools developed by the OMPI and will have a central applicability in the development of this project: the WIPO Case platform, which will allow the exchange of information and integration between the participating offices.

The conclusions and recommendations stemming from the seminar will be soon made available to the directors of the participating offices.