Industrial property training

The Spanish Patents and Trademark Office (OEPM) is responsible for ‘promoting initiatives and developing activities leading to better knowledge of industrial property’.

In order to perform this function, the OEPM works with academic institutions and organisations that promote and disseminate the importance of industrial property for business, scientific and innovation activities.

The OEPM offers awareness days, courses and seminars on all aspects of industrial property to educational units, technology parks, innovation centres, technology transfer offices and documentation centres, among others.

Knowledge has become a driver for growth in the current environment, and industrial property rights are an essential pillar of value creation. A large part of a company’s market value is determined by its intangible assets in the form of patents, trade marks and designs, which allow it to obtain better funding and increased return on its RDI investment.

Therefore, the Carlos Fernández-Nóvoa Chair of Innovation and Industrial Property was created. This is the result of the collaboration of two Ministry of Industry and Tourism  institutions with a great deal of experience in the field of teaching. These are the Escuela de Organización Industrial (EOI) [business school] and the OEPM .

The purpose of the Chair is to coordinate the multiple activities carried out by both institutions in the field of innovation and industrial property, creating new synergies and achieving greater integration and coordination of the training and distribution activities, and also setting up a joint company–academic platform.

The teaching material that the OEPM possesses for training and education is available under the  Training  section on the OEPM website.

• There is a manual for designing Intellectual and industria l property courses created by the European Patent Academy, which can be used by university professors who wish to incorporate intellectual and industrial property teaching into their classes.
• There are also games available for younger students.
  • El Camino de las Marcas [‘The way of the trade mark’], created with Andema [Asociación para la defensa de la Marca – Association for the defence of the trade mark] for World Anti-counterfeiting Day, and which the EUIPO asked to use for teaching in schools.
  • Question and answer games, located in the historical section of the OEPM.
  • The ‘Spot the difference’ game, also located in the historical section of the OEPM.
• There are also children’s videos created by WIPO, KIPO and KIPA, dubbed into Spanish.
  • ‘Getting creative with Pororo’:
    • Episode 03: ‘Pororo makes his mark’;
    • Episode 02: ‘The invention contest’;
    • Episode 01: ‘Great ideas’.
• Children’s worksheets have also been created according to their language and understanding, on the following subjects.
  • Industrial property
  • Patents.
  • Trade marks.
  • Counterfeits.

The signing of a framework agreement for collaboration between the OEPM and the Conferencia de Rectores de las Universidades Españolas (CRUE) [Association of Spanish Universities] on industrial property should be highlighted as a milestone in the progress made towards innovation-based education. The aim of the agreement is as follows.

• To inspire and stimulate knowledge and use of industrial property rights in the university environment.
• To encourage and promote the use of technical information provided by patents and scientific literature, either in the initial approach to any research project – in order to avoid redundant research – or in the final phases of the project – in order to assess the potential patentability of the results and transfer to the market.
• To promote industrial property teaching on university curricula.
• To establish a clear channel of communication between the OEPM and Spanish universities.

That is why, in addition to its own activities or those on which it collaborates with other organisations, the OEPM is committed to promoting all training courses and activities relating to industrial property in order to reach an increasing target audience.

Below is a list of training activities and teaching curricula in the field of industrial property.

• INDUSTRIAL PROPERTY TRAINING ACTIVITIES.
  • Long-term courses.
  • Supranational organisation activities on intellectual and industrial property.
• INDUSTRIAL PROPERTY TEACHING IN SECONDARY EDUCATION.
• PATENTS AND SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITY.

Notice for institutions interested in training

If you are interested in having industrial property training in your organisation, please fill in the application form on Training / Dissemination activity.