DOMINICAN REPUBLIC Law and Practice Contributed by: Sarah de León Perelló, Elizabeth Silfa Micheli and Naomi Rodríguez Manzueta, Headrick Rizik Álvarez & Fernández
The right to the exclusive use of a trademark is acquired through its registration before ONAPI. After the trademark application is filed before ONAPI, the distinctive signs department pro - ceeds with the formal evaluation of the merits. Once the trademark is approved, it is published in the Official Gazette of ONAPI. After the pub - lication, any third party may file an opposition against the application for registration, within a period of 45 days from the notice’s publication date. After this period has elapsed, and if no oppositions are filed, ONAPI proceeds to grant and register the trademark. Upon registration, a trademark is valid for ten years from the date on which the registration certificate is issued and may be renewed for successive periods of ten years following the expiration date. The owner has a grace period of six months to proceed with the renewal, after the expiration date. The law establishes criminal and economic sanctions for unauthorised commercial use of a registered trademark or a fraudulent imitation of a trademark, in relation to the products or ser - vices that it distinguishes, or to related products or services. The owner of a registered trademark can initiate administrative actions against appli - cations or registered trademarks that affect their trademark, or file civil actions before the relevant court against any person who infringes the rights granted by law, including petitioning for conserv - atory measures. 7.3 Industrial Design According to Law No 20-00, an industrial design is any collection of lines or combinations of col - ours, or any two-dimensional or three-dimen- sional external shape that is incorporated into an industrial or handicraft product, including parts
intended for assembly in a complex product, the packaging, presentation, graphic symbols and typographic characters, excluding computer programs, to give it a special appearance, with - out changing the destination or purpose of said product. The right to obtain the protection of an industrial design belongs to the designer(s). The protection is acquired via registration before the inventions department of ONAPI, provided that it is a new design and has a unique char - acter. The protection of an industrial design does not include the elements or characteristics of the design determined solely by the performance of a technical function that does not incorpo - rate any arbitrary contribution of the designer or that its reproduction is necessary to allow the product that incorporates it to be mechanically assembled or connected with another product of which it constitutes a part or integral piece. The scope of its protection is to exclude third parties from the exploitation of the industrial design. The application must be filed before ONAPI, including the details of the applicant, the design - er, a brief description of the visible characteris - tics that appear in each graphic or photographic representation, and the drawings and/or photo - graphs of the industrial design. Once the appli - cation is filed, ONAPI’s inventions department proceeds with the evaluation of the application to verify if meets the requirements established to grant protection over the industrial design. The duration of the registration is five years, and it may be extended for two additional periods of five years by paying the established extension fee.
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