Chile Country Commercial Guide
Learn about the market conditions, opportunities, regulations, and business conditions in chile, prepared by at U.S. Embassies worldwide by Commerce Department, State Department and other U.S. agencies’ professionals
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Protection of Property Rights
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Ongoing Challenges and Concerns

Chile remains on the United States Trade Representative (USTR) Priority Watch List in 2025 The United States continues to have serious concerns regarding long-standing implementation issues with a number of intellectual property (IP) obligations under the United States-Chile Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that remain outstanding more than twenty years since the FTA entered into force. Chile took a step forward in 2022 by acceding to the Madrid Protocol Concerning the International Registration of Marks and modernizing many aspects of its IP regime, including criminalizing trademark falsification, recognition of non-traditional marks, introducing provisional applications for patents, incorporating a broader definition of trade secrets, and extending the term of protection for industrial designs to 15 years. Concerns remain regarding the availability of effective administrative and expeditious judicial procedures for dealing with copyright piracy. Legislatively, the country lacks deterrent-level penalties and protections against circumvention of technological protection measures (TPMs) to combat online piracy.

Pharmaceutical stakeholders continue to raise concerns over the efficacy of Chile’s system for resolving patent issues expeditiously in connection with applications to market pharmaceutical products, and over the provision of adequate protection against unfair commercial use, as well as unauthorized disclosure, of undisclosed test results or other data generated to obtain marketing approval for pharmaceutical products. Stakeholders also have expressed concerns over the vagueness of certain provisions of the Ley de Fármacos II (Medicines Legislation II), which has stalled in the Chilean legislature since its introduction in 2018. The United States continues to urge Chile to ratify and implement the 1991 Act of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants Convention (UPOV 91) and improve protection for plant varieties.

Developments, Including Progress and Actions Taken

On February 7, 2022, Chile’s law that sanctions illegal trade and intellectual piracy, was enacted to strengthen control actions, and provide the police with more efficient tools to enforce the law. The law will make it possible to identify and disrupt organized crime gangs dedicated to illegal trade, prosecuting the sale, reproduction, marketing, or receipt of counterfeit or unauthorized products. The law covers the following crimes: counterfeiting, reproduction, or unauthorized sale of literary, artistic, or scientific works protected by the intellectual property law; as well as phonograms, videograms, phonographic records, cassettes, videocassettes, films or motion pictures, and computer programs protected by intellectual property law. The police, municipal inspectors, and officials of the Chilean Internal Revenue Service are authorized to monitor the compliance with the regulations. They will be permitted to demand municipal or sanitary permits, as well as the documents that prove the origin of the goods. The new law also provides the Public Prosecutor’s Office with new mechanisms that facilitate investigative and inspection work.

Reform to the Industrial Property Law entered into force on May 9, 2022. Law 21,355, or also known as “INAPI Short Law,” modernizes the regulatory framework that dates to 1991 for trademark and patent prosecution. One of the most significant changes is the incorporation of provisional patents. Inventors, universities, research centers, and companies that file a patent application will have 12 months to gather all the necessary information. For the first time in Chile, this law gives the possibility to protect non-traditional trademarks, and includes a conceptual definition that offers numerous possibilities, for instance, protecting tri-dimensional marks. The law removed the requirement to include a graphic representation. Chile also enacted two laws in 2023: Law 21,577 on the prosecution of organized crime offenses and Law 21,595 that created new categories of “economic crimes” both relating to trademark and patent infringement. The effectiveness of these laws is yet to be seen as rulings are pending on cases.

Chile continues to carry out enforcement efforts to combat counterfeits. During 2024, the Intellectual Property Brigade (BRIDEPI) of the Chilean Investigative Police (PDI) reported fewer IPR enforcement actions than the previous year, while actions of the National Customs Service increased. PDI seized 59,856 counterfeit products in 2024 (up from 51,312 in 2023), worth a total of $1.8 million (down from $13.6 million in 2023). The Chilean National Customs Service reported that more than 8.1 million counterfeit products were seized (up from 4.2 million in 2023) during its 1,381 enforcement actions in 2024. In the first half of 2025, Chilean authorities continued to conduct enforcement actions in locations in Santiago, including the Barrio Meiggs, the port of San Antonio, and the Iquique Free Trade Zone, resulting in seizures of backpacks, parkas, sneakers, stuffed animals, toys, electronic apparatus, and cellphone cases valued at several million dollars. Concerns also remain with the lack of copyright enforcement efforts by the Chilean authorities. In July 2024, Chile’s National Institute of Industrial Property (INAPI) published a report indicating that the number of copyright-related criminal cases in Chile declined by 60% between 2017 and 2022. Stakeholders cite the lack of enforcement for high levels of online piracy, including through stream-ripping, streaming, piracy apps, signal theft and circumvention devices.

In any foreign market, companies should consider several general principles for effective protection of their intellectual property. For background, U.S. exporters are encouraged to review the information on Protecting Intellectual Property and Stopfakes.gov for more resources.

For more information on IP in Chile, contact:

Jennifer Chicoski
Regional IP Attaché for the Andean Community and Chile
Jennifer.Chicoski@trade.gov
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Department of Commerce
International Trade Administration, U.S. Embassy Lima, Peru
Tel: +(51) 1 618-2173

Stevan Mitchell
Director, Office of Standards and IP Rights (OSIP)
Stevan.Mitchell@trade.gov
International Trade Commission, U.S. Department of Commerce
https://www.trade.gov/about-us/office-standards-and-intellectual-property

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