01.05.2023

On April 7, 2023, a new edition of the patent legislation began to operate in Kyrgyzstan.

In particular, some of the rules were brought into line with the Protocol on Industrial Designs to the Eurasian Patent Convention.

If in the previous version of the Law, the term of protection of industrial designs was 10 years with the possibility of extending the term of legal protection for another 5 years, in the new version the term of protection of industrial designs has been increased to 25 years.

At the same time, the list of essential features has been excluded from the list of documents for filing an application for a patent for an industrial design.

Also, the term of legal protection of the utility model has been increased to 10 years, while in the previous edition, the term of legal protection was 5 years with the right to extend for 3 years.

Also, the new version of the Law excludes the possibility of issuing a patent for an invention under the responsibility of the applicant. A patent “under the responsibility of the applicant” was previously issued in a shorter time. The search was carried out only for local novelty (the territory of the member states of the Eurasian Patent Convention). In this case, only the applicant bears the entire burden of responsibility for subsequent possible disputes. On the other hand, this approach created some legal uncertainty and also affected the quality of granted patents. These shortcomings are eliminated in the new edition of the Law.

The new version of the Law also provides the applicant with the opportunity to use the system of electronic filing of applications for the issuance of a national patent for inventions, utility models, and industrial designs.