VENEZUELA Law and Practice Contributed by: Dana Bentata, Anette Beyer and Biddy Fraga Bentata, Bentata Abogados
Bentata Abogados Av. Orinoco con Calle Mucuchíes Torre Nórdic, PH Las Mercedes Caracas Venezuela Tel: +58 212 600 7400 Email: lawyers@bentata.com Web: www.bentata.com
industrial property agent, in accordance with Article 51 of the LPI. Where an application is filed through an agent, the applicant must submit an original, notarised and legalised power of attorney together with the application or, at the latest, in response to an office action issued by the IP Office as part of its for- mal examination. This burdensome requirement can add time and logistical complexity for foreign appli- cants, particularly where the power of attorney must be apostilled and couriered from abroad. In addition, because Venezuela is not a contracting state to the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), appli- cants cannot designate Venezuela through the PCT system and must instead file directly before the local IP Office. As a result, foreign rights-holders must man- age their Venezuelan patent portfolio as a separate work stream within any broader international patent strategy. Notably, Venezuela experienced a suspension of pat- ent grants from 2004 to 2020, with prosecution resum- ing after the IP Office recognised the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) through Official Notice No DG-09-2020. This prolonged interruption created a gap in recent prec- edent and contributed to a substantial backlog in patent prosecutions and grants. As a result, the esti- mated time to obtain a patent is approximately four to six years from the date of filing, in the absence of oppositions and office actions. The patent application process generally includes the following steps:
1. Patents 1.1 Legal Framework and Patentable Subject Matter Patent protection is governed by the Industrial Prop- erty Law of 1955 ( Ley de Propiedad Industrial , or LPI), which was wholly reinstated following the nation’s withdrawal from the Andean Community in 2006, along with the Organic Law of Administrative Proce- dure ( Ley Orgánica de Procedimientos Administra- tivos , or LOPA). Patentable subject matter is defined in Articles 14 and 22 of the LPI. It extends to inventions, industrial designs, industrial models, processes for preparing chemical products, and methods for elab- orating, extracting or separating natural substances, provided that the subject matter is novel, involves an inventive step and is capable of industrial application. Articles 14 and 22 of the LPI establish a non-exhaus- tive list, subject to the exclusions in Article 15, which bars from protection, among others: living matter, food, beverages, medicines, pharmaceutical prepa- rations and chemical combinations, methods of work, manufacturing know-how, and inventions already dis- closed or in the public domain before filing. It also bars the patenting of mere combinations of known elements, unless they are integrated in such a way that they cannot function independently. 1.2 Patent Granting Procedure Patent applications must be filed before the Autono- mous Service of Industrial Property ( Servicio Autóno- mo de la Propiedad Intelectual , the “IP Office”) either directly by the applicant or through a registered local
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