Intellectual property information in Latin America and the Caribbean

The nature and extent of the automation of the statutory work of the industrial property offices in the region are outlined. In contrast to the parallel automation of both patent and trademark work in many countries, trade mark applications provide a very high proportion of the total applications to the offices in this region and automated processing of these applications is accordingly more advanced than for patent, utility model etc applications. The resulting databases which are or can be made available to the public are similarly restricted. The development of information services, towards a goal of Intellectual Property Digital Libraries (IPDLs), is very dependent on both local and WIPO funding, and will also be influenced by the expanding possibilities on the Internet. The author ends by examining some of the factors influencing the decisions about charging for some information services (e.g. to help fund further development and provision of such services), rather than provide them entirely as free assistance to the public.