Positive Effects of Covid-19 on Intellectual Property

It is undeniable that the COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked significant havoc on the activities of global economies in all branches and on all scales. However, Intellectual Property has also been favored with a great increase in creative and inventive activity, exemplified by the development of capsules for transporting patients, which are placed on stretchers and from the outside is connected to respirators without risk of infection; baby safety capsules with sealed cabin and air purification system with special access equipped with a glove by which the baby can be breastfed; self-contained artificial respirators; respirator valves; masks; vaccines; and drugs to combat COVID-19.

In the same vein, the adaptation of automobile machinery and alcoholic beverages mainly for the manufacture of hand disinfectants and masks to combat the spread of the virus, as well as the configuration of devices and software that inhibit or reduce habits such as touching the face, nose and mouth or to speed up and automate hospital records.

All these innovations or improvements have been made thanks to the use of pre-existing patents and utility models which, through authorisations, allow third parties to use existing knowledge to improve it and, of course, by being protected, grant holders exclusive rights that they can license temporarily in return for royalties.

Let us remember that patents are creations, a product of the human intellect, that is to say, the result of an inventive activity that allows the transformation of matter or energy that exists in nature, for use by humanity in meeting concrete needs, such inventions must be capable of industrial application.

Whereas utility models are objects, utensils, appliances or tools which, as a result of a modification in their arrangement, configuration, structure or shape, have a different function in relation to the component parts or advantages in terms of their usefulness.

In these pandemic times the positive effects of COVID-19 on Intellectual Property have become notorious, as patents and utility models have proved to be indispensable pillars of the economies of companies and countries, regardless of the type of market to which they are directed, given that for the companies they are; a core part of their assets as highly valuable intangible assets and for the countries shows the innovative power that they possess.

In Bandala | Díaz | García we keep you updated on the positive effects of COVID-19 on Intellectual Property.