During the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2016 the Commercial Courts of Barcelona applied the “Protocol on Patent and Trademark Issues”, agreed after the edition of the MWC 2015. The aim of the aforementioned Protocol was to quickly and efficiently settle any possible disputes that could arise when such Congress was held. In this respect, the Commercial Courts of Barcelona had undertaken the following commitments:
a) Preferential and priority processing of urgent interim injunctions, when the object thereof is patents, utility models, industrial designs, trademarks, copyrights, and unfair competition and misleading advertising acts regarding products and materials of companies taking part in the MWC, by immediately removing any products that could infringe rights held by third parties.
b) To speedily adopt the interim injunctions petitioned within a term of two days, counted from the time they are filed in the court, without holding a hearing of the defendant, and a maximum of ten days when a hearing is set (providing a protective letter has been submitted).
c) Within the scope of a possible dispute related to industrial or intellectual property with a company and if there are reasonable fears that it could be object of a petition for interim injunctions without holding a hearing, to admit the protective letters submitted to the Commercial Courts of Barcelona in order to avoid, as far as possible, that interim injunctions are adopted without holding a hearing of the defendant, which will allow (i) the latter to explain its allegations and, (ii) enable it the possibility to immediately appear in Court to settle any petition filed for interim injunctions without holding a hearing.
Our experience confirms that the Commercial Courts already implemented the operational system agreed in the aforementioned Protocol at the last edition of the MWC, allowing protective letters to be submitted by those taking part in the Congress and granting a priority for their speedy processing.
This is a pioneer initiative of the Commercial Courts of Barcelona among all the Courts in Spain and a very welcome step so that a guarantee can be granted to both the holders of industrial and intellectual property rights and the companies taking part in the MWC to ensure they have greater legal security for the protection of their economic rights and interests.