One of the pillars of President Mauricio Macri's policy program is the "modernization" of the government's functioning. In order to accomplish this he promised to reduce public spending, digitalize processes and optimize the public administration's structure.

During his first two years of presidency progressive measures were implemented to that end, however in January 2018 he issued the presidential Decree 27/2018, denominated "Debureaucratisation and Simplification" of the State. This Decree established a major restructuration of many areas of the public administration, legislating on sanitary affairs, fiscal regulations, corporative norms, Intellectual Property rules, among other areas.

In terms of IP regulation it granted broader powers to the administrative authority -Instituto Nacional de la Propiedad Industrial (INPI)- to solve controversies and start own-initiative procedures. IP experts criticize this measures as the lack of personnel will result in delays, and thus will be counterproductive.

The attributive system of Trademarks was also altered given that now it is mandatory to file an affidavit after the fifth year of the Trademark registration declaring that the Trademark was used in Argentina. One of the most praised aspect of the Decree is the reduction of the deadlines in Patenting processes, which usually take an average of 5 years before the definitive Resolution of the Authority.  The Decree modified the concept of Industrial Designs and Models by including artisans products in this classification.

Most opinions agree that Intellectual Property regulations in Argentina needed a legislative update, however there are two major problems with the Decree that create an uncertain legislative scenario.

There are no transitional regulations from the prior system to the new one. This results in unclear situations that are still being resolved by the Authority, given that it is not clear which controversy mechanism applies to open processes. 

Furthermore, this Decree is a special instrument called "Decreto de Necesidad y Urgencia" (Decree of Necessity and Urgency). It grants the President legislative attributions, and can only be issued in extreme situations. In order for the Decree to continue in force it will need the approval of at least one of the Chambers of Congress. However, given that the ruling party does not have majority in the Chambers it is probable that it may not be approved.

In conclusion, even though Argentina needs an update in Intellectual Property regulation the instrument used by the government in this case produced an uncertain situation as it has not been approved by Congress yet. Furthermore, the content of the Decree is not unanimously approved by specialist in the subject, given that it includes unclear regulations.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.