For those of you who may be attending the American Translators Association’s annual conference next week in Boston, you may be interested in a session I will be giving on Friday on distinguishing and translating the terminology of propiedad intelectual and propiedad industrial. I’ll focus on how intellectual property is defined and protected in the US and in Spanish-speaking jurisdictions, providing a concise summary of how copyright, patents, trademarks, and other intellectual property rights may be acquired, defended, transferred, and (possibly) lost in both systems. We’ll look at the application-to-grant process in each case, and key terminology will be reviewed in both Spanish and English. I’ve also prepared for attendees a bilingual glossary of all of the terms we’ll discuss. Here’s an overview of the session content:

• Distinguishing propiedad intelectual and propiedad industrial (copyright vs. patents, trademarks and other registrable rights)
• Copyright (propiedad intelectual; derechos de autor)
  • Defining what constitutes a copyrightable work (what can be copyrighted and what cannot)
• • Rights in copyrighted works: author’s moral and economic rights (derechos morales y patrimoniales), neighboring rights (derechos afines), and exploitation rights (derechos de explotación)
• • Protecting copyright: the registration process
  • Transferring copyright: licenses (licencias) and assignments (cesiones)
• Patent law (Derecho de patentes)
  • Patentability requirements (requisitos de patentabilidad)
• • Structure and content of a patent application
• • Applying for and obtaining a patent (solicitud y concesión de patentes)
  • Protecting patents from infringement
• Trademark Law (Derecho de marcas)
  • “Standard” trademarks: word marks (marcas denominativas), device/design marks (marcas gráficas), and composite marks (marcas mixtas)
• • “New” trademarks: can sounds or smells be registered as trademarks?
• • Protecting trademarks by registration: the first-to-file (Spain, Latin America) vs. first-to-use (US) systems
• • The trademark registration process (búsqueda de antecedentes, solicitud, examen de prohibiciones relativas y absolutas, concesión)
• • International Classification of Goods and Services (Clasificación Internacional de Productos y Servicios)
• • Registration by class
• • Protecting trademark rights (acciones en defensa de la marca)
    • Opposition watch service (aviso de parecidos) to oppose applications for confusingly-similar marks
• • • Registering defensive trademarks (marcas defensivas)
• • • Filing infringement actions (acción por usurpación de marca)
• • • Combating counterfeit and gray-market goods (falsificaciones y productos del mercado gris)
    Transferring trademark rights: licenses (licencias) and assignments (cesiones)
• • Dilution of trademark rights by tarnishment or blurring (dilución por degradación o empañamiento)
  • Loss of trademark rights
    • Genericness (“vulgarización” de la marca)
  • • Failure to use (falta de uso)
  • • Failure to renew (impago de la tasa de renovación)
    • Surrender of trademark rights (renuncia del titular)