Cuba

Cuban Boletín oficial del registro de la propiedad industrial as accessed via Hathitrust

CU is an abbreviation in this wiki referring to Cuba.

The Cuban patent office at the time of early aviation was the Oficina Nacional De Inciones, Información Técnica y Marcas, and the current one is the Oficina Cubana De La Propiedad Industrial, ocpi.cu.

Hathitrust, not to mention Google, may be circumvented. Simple 1910 search results within the OCPI Website, for instance, offer access to numerous publications.

Historical evolution of patenting within Cuba

PANORAMA HISTÓRICO of the OCPI

Cuban national identity began coming together at the end of the 18th Century.

In the first three decades of the nineteenth century all the continental colonies of Spain had been liberated, with only two left: Cuba and Puerto Rico, so the Spanish monarch decided to dictate the Royal Certificate of July 30, 1833. This extended to these colonies and the Philippines the provisions of the Royal Decree of March 27, 1826, which stipulated the rules for the granting privileges of invention and introducing improvements on the basis of the first Patent Law, enacted in Spain in 1820. In this way, the Royal Decree is the first instrument relating to Industrial property law in Cuba.

This legislation was followed by other royal orders and decrees which established provisions to specify the implementation of the Law on Patents of 1820. Key developments were the Royal Order of August 18, 1842, which established the provisions allowing for the revision before the courts of the privileges granted to holders who had submitted false data, the Royal Order of January 11, 1849, which required the form and conditions of the verified implementation of the inventions. These aspects had not been well defined in the Royal Decree of 1826.

The Royal Order of July 16, 1849 provided that claims for annulment privileges conceived, for reasons of lack of novelty, were the responsibility of ordinary courts, and on July 30, 1877, another Royal Decree moved the filing of applications for privilege made to the Intendent from the provincial authority to the Ministry of Development.

The oldest document in Cuba's patent office, or in its evolving offices, which offered protection to an invention, specifically in Cuba, dates from March 22, 1867. This was a Cédula de Privilegio (Certificate of Privilege) issued by the Secretaría de Agricultura, Comercio y Trabajo in favour of Mr. Alejo Sonjol, for “Mejoras en los carruajes volantas” (“Improvements in flying carriages”).

Cuba's provisions on the protection and use of trademarks, industrial designs, were established through the Royal Decree of August 21, 1884, which became known as the Ley de Marcas (Law on Trademarks). The draft decree was drawn up in Cuba, by the Ministro de Ultramar (Foreign Minister), Manuel Aguirre de Tejada, who introduced it to the Spanish King. The development achieved by Cuba's tobacco industry and the rise of its brands required effective protection.

(Any procedural turning point in 1884 suggests the relevance of the Convention de Paris pour la protection de la propriété industrielle, which took place in 1883 and which laid the foundation of most international deference to “priority dates”.)

The first American intervention in Cuba introduced changes in the area of Industrial Property in the country, and must be tempered by many of the regulations in force in the United States of America, in accordance with the laws of that state. To this end, a number of orders are enacted, including Military Order No. 190 of October 19, 1899, which established the term in 17 years and the amount of concession rights in 35 Pesos.

Through the Circular of 12 November 1899, the Customs and Island Business Secretariat (sic) of the U.S. Department of War ordered that all industrial property rights granted in the United States be protected in Cuba under the laws of that country.

Military Order No. 216 of May 26, 1900 established that the owners patents registered in Spain had to be filed in Cuba, that certificates accrediting registration and validity in Spain had to be likewise protected in Cuba. It was also definitively established that American patents were would be valid in Cuba.

The year 1904 was another year for Cuba in terms of Industrial property law at the international level, as this marked Cuba's accession to the Convention in Paris for the Protection of Industrial Property (1891), which further linked Cuba to international practice in these regards.

For more of this general history, the points of which post-date our years of primary interest, see PANORAMA HISTÓRICO of the OCPI.

Access to antique publications

Cuban Boletín oficial del registro de la propiedad industrial as accessed via Hathitrust (Note the lack of any second "r" in "propiedad") Select "Full view 1910-11 AG-JA", for the earliest material.

("Full view 1917-18 JY-JE" begins with pages of patent-connected advertisements. That is, they look like advertisements, but-and are also inclusive of legal specifics and so forth of interest moreso to patent agents, inventors and so forth rather than to ordinary "customers". Both "1910-11 AG-JA" and "1917-18 JY-JE" are offering our first clues into Cuban patent classifications.)

Once in, viewing "Full view 1910-11 AG-JA", that is, at least one Spanish-language keyword, "aérea", leads straight to material on Louis Blériot. These particular leads, it must be noted, take us to apparently new Cuban numbers given while referring to Swiss filing dates. We'll have to look into this further. The numbers given, treated as CH, within Espacenet, yield entirely other results. Yes, this seems to be peculiar arrangement between Cuba and Switerland. Within this scanned document, page 14, as seen on the analogue original, commences with Trademark No. 8390 and goes through several pages of Cuban notations of Swiss filing dates. On page 119, again as seen on the analogue original, commences a similar bulk of material, "redundant", with our tentative Patent CU-1909-8469‎ and Patent CU-1909-8470, sharing one entry (in each of the two sections of the publication). There may or may not be much more aero, and are these patents per se, filed by the inventors in Havana? They seem to be a bulk of Swiss filings documented en masse and renumbered and catalogued in Havana, in a numeric range showing no relation to the CH numbers of the years in question. It seems to reflect a peculiar international arrangement, reflecting a negotiated policy of patent and trademark acknowledgement, and we may be dealing with a new sort of document which is being catalogued. This exclusive emphasis on priority date may have been a very thorough and uniquely Cuban-Swiss initiative response to the legislation associated with the Convention de Paris pour la protection de la propriété industrielle.

Much of this emphasis on Switzerland, on filing dates in Bern, carries over into "Full view 1917-18 JY-JE" as well, though other key capital cities appear in the text as well. A text search for "Paris", however, brings up, among other things, references to provisions following from the "Convenio de París de 20 de Marzo de 1883", that is, the Convention de Paris pour la protection de la propriété industrielle.

There are lists of patents, grouped elsewhere in the volume, which explicitly do give patent numbers as filed in other nations, and there are original patents by Cubans, in Cuba.

At first glance, much patent classification seems to be broadly and simply verbal, that is, descriptive, per se, without number or letter classifications, but we'll have to return to this. This volume seems to cover all aspects of international trade, production and currency.

Patents reports

Patents associated with the Cuban patent office

Patents filed in Cuba

• Patent CU-1909-8469 (English title: Machines and metal parts of all kinds and more particularly utensils such as those for aerial navigation, their accessories, their loose parts, products or materials constituting or intended for their use, Inventors: Louis Blériot)
• Patent CU-1909-8470 (English title: Machines and metal parts of all kinds and more particularly utensils such as those for aerial navigation, their accessories, their loose parts, products or materials constituting or intended for their use, Inventors: Louis Blériot)

Patents filed by Cubans

• Patent US-1911-998402 (English title: Aeroplane, Inventors: Manuel B Saavedra)
• Patent FR-1911-427635 (English title: Improvements to airplanes, Inventors: Manuel B Saavedra)
• Patent US-1914-1115510 (English title: Aeroplane, Inventors: Jose Coronel)