Managing Intellectual Property in Iran

As a result of the Iran nuclear deal signed last year, economic sanctions on the Middle-Eastern country have been lifted on January 16, 2016. Governmental authorities and industry organizations were quick to welcome this step in opening up the Iranian economy to international trade and investment. For example, the German-Iranian Chamber of Commerce and the European-Iranian Business Alliance released statements expressing their hope that business relations with Iran will be flourishing again in the future.

With the start of a hopefully new and long-lasting period of good business relations with Iran, exporting companies should start rethinking about their intellectual property strategy for the Iranian market. The first question is of course which protective IP rights are available in Iran. Actually, Iran is a member of the Paris Convention and a contracting state of all major treaties administered by WIPO, including the Patent Cooperation Treaty, the Madrid Agreement and the Madrid Protocol (click here for an overview).

We at Dennemeyer have a long-standing relationship with our colleagues in Iran. Furthermore, we have experienced that centralized formalities procedures, especially with regards to notarization, can help clients move forward their IP projects almost everywhere and in fact in Iran. During the sanctions, we helped clients, some of them U.S.-based, with filing and prosecuting intellectual property rights in Iran including patents concerning the oil and gas industry. With these recent developments in mind, we are looking forward to playing our part in normalizing the economic relations with Iran, with our focus being of course the field of Intellectual Property.