Information Policy
Most of Chile 's regulations concerning intellectual property are from the nation's 1991 Industrial Property Law 19,039. This deals in large part with deals with trade mark annulment actions. Also there was a 1992 amendment to a 1970 Intellectual Property Law, Law 19,166 of 1992. This amendment was meant to bring Chilean standards in line with the Bern Convention. One of the terms of the amendment was to extend copyright protection from 30 years after the author's death to 50 years. This is the only type of copyright that exists in Chile and it covers books, designs and computer software, audio and video recordings, photographs, architectural plans and maps. All copyrights must be registered at the Intellectual Property Register. All copyrights enjoy the same protection on the Internet as in other media although enforcement is more difficult.
Internet domain names are registered by Nic-Chile which follows the regulations issued by Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). If disputes arise concerning a particular domain name between two parties, settlement is pursued through arbitration.
Piracy of software has been on the decline in Chile and is particularly a problem at smaller business and in homes. According to the Business Software Alliance, software piracy fell by 1% from 2002 to 2003. A small decline but indicative of the trend toward greater respect of the laws regulating this are. Destruction of pirated materials has become more frequent thereby further discouraging this practice.
The Chilean Congress has been considering tougher regulations to tighten control over intellectual property. Although this has been a consideration since late 1999, not much progress has been made. A bill was submitted that takes into consideration the commitments made by Chile under the WTO's 1994 agreement Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPs). Some of the revisions to the exiting laws would include:
- modernization of dispute-settlement procedures for patents and trademarks,
- increase life of industrial patents from 15 to 20 years,
- allow for the expiration of trademarks that are not in use,
- protect integrated circuit designs, and
- increase resources for the arbitration tribunal.
Trademarks last for 10 years in Chile . The process for registration is long, usually lasting between 6 to 8 months but is not particularly cumbersome since it does not require the use of lawyers or agents [9].