About This Book
The purpose of this book by Leonel Salazar Reyes Zumeta is to analyze the current situation of the protection of well-known distinctive signs, in accordance with Venezuelan legislation and applicable international conventional law and aims to provide a contribution to the understanding of this important institution of industrial property law.
The evolution of Venezuelan regulations in the field of industrial property (1877-1955), when regulating trademarks as distinctive signs, did not contemplate the specific regulation of well-known distinctive signs. The Galleries Lafayette judgment established for the first time the ultra-territorial protection of the well-known distinctive signs (Political-Administrative Chamber, Supreme Court of Justice, 1993).
The protection of the well-known distinctive signs follows the full adoption by Venezuela of the community norms of the Andean Pact (1971), now the Andean Community of Nations (CAN), following the approval of Decision 311 on the Common Industrial Property Regime (1991), and its successors (D313, D344 and D486). However, D85 (1974), the founding legal instrument of the Community intellectual property regime, was never applied in our country, due to the legal reservation (1973) to the accession treaty regarding the direct and preferential application of Community rules. Since 1994, Venezuela has acceded to various international treaties that provide explicit protection to the well-known distinctive signs (WTO-TRIPS, 1994; Paris Convention, 1995; MERCOSUR, 2012). But, due to Venezuela's withdrawal from the CAN (April 21, 2006), and its suspension from MERCOSUR (2017), the regulation, protection and testing of the well-known distinctive signs was under the protection of the Industrial Property Law (1955) and the international treaties in force.
