“I have the honor to submit for your consideration the
following observations:
“Article II of the Convention on Trade Marks, signed at
Buenos Aires the 20th of August, 1910, by the delegates of
the American Republics to the Fourth International American
Conference textually reads:
‘Article II. Any mark duly registered in one of the
signatory States shall be considered as registered
also in the other States of the Union,80
without prejudice to the rights of third persons and
to the provisions of the laws of each State
governing the same.
‘In order to enjoy the benefit of the foregoing, the
manufacturer or merchant interested in the registry
of the mark must pay, in addition to the fees or
charges fixed by the laws of the State in which
application for registration is first made, the sum
of fifty dollars gold, which sum shall cover all the
expenses of both Bureaux for the international
registration in all the signatory States.’
“From the cited text, a citizen, for example, of the United
States of America, who pays the ‘fees or charges’ which the
law of the
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United
States prescribes for the registry in that country of a
trade mark, and moreover pays the fixed fee of $50 only
once, a fee destined to cover the expenses of international
registration in the appropriate bureau, will enjoy the
benefit of having his mark registered in all the other
States of the Union. Therefore, in the case of the aforesaid
example, the citizen of the United States would also have,
according to the article cited, his mark protected in
Nicaragua, although we would collect no fee for it; also, as
these cases, referring to the United States of America, will
reach into the thousands annually, we shall have to
establish a new Office of Registration of Trade Marks with a
large personnel capable of attending to the great amount of
work which would be created. Moreover, it is necessary to
take into consideration that at present the greater part of
the marks which are registered in this office come from the
United States of America, and that from them the Treasury
receives a considerable income, which will cease from the
moment the owners of those marks, by paying to their own
Government the fees which heretofore they have paid here,
obtain in Nicaragua the protection of their marks, a thing
which, as has been said before, they could only obtain
heretofore by paying here also the fees which our law
requires. In short, we stop collecting the fees which our
law requires with the obligation of doing gratuitously the
same service for which we used to receive payment, and
moreover, we incur considerable expense which heretofore we
did not have, for, as you well know, Mr. Minister, the
registration of trade marks and patents today does not cost
Nicaragua one centavo. For the reasons set forth, unless
there be a better and more authoritative opinion, this
office considers it advisable for Nicaragua to make use
immediately of the right which article XIX gives it to
denounce the convention, notifying, as therein stipulated,
the other signatory States, through the medium of the
Government of the Argentine Republic.”
