The Directors General of the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI), Miguel Ángel Margáin, and the Venezuelan Autonomous Service of Intellectual Property (SAPI), José Miguel Villanueva Rocca, held recently a meeting with the aim of drafting a joint working plan on industrial property.

This meeting is a result of the agreements reached during the II Permanent Binational Commission Mexico-Venezuela held on November 5-6, 2014, in Ciudad de México.

It is important to point out the interest that SAPI staff showed in the Support System for the Management of Patent Applications for Central American countries and Dominican Republic (CADOPAT), which is a service IMPI has provided since 2007.

The CADOPAT platform was established to facilitate sharing information from patent examinations and to support IP offices in, initially, the Central American and Caribbean region in prior art searches and substantive examination of patent applications. Afterwards, CADOPAT was extended to other countries, including the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) Member States, so they could also benefit from this service.

Originally published on 10 March in http://www.impi.gob.mx

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