Argentina: Intellectual property and franchise agreements

Several sections related to IP-related matters in the Argentine New Civil and Commercial Code are among the regulations that govern agreements, and among those agreements it is the franchise agreement that has the largest amount of regulations of interest in terms of intellectual property.

In that respect, Section 1512 sets forth that the franchisor needs to be the exclusive holder of the rights in the trade marks, patents, commercial names and copyrights or needs to have the right to confer to the franchisee the right of use and transmission under the terms of these types of contracts.

The object of the franchise agreement is represented by the authorisation in favour of the franchisee to use a proven good-or-service-commercialisation system.

The license of the referred industrial or intellectual property rights is directly associated with the essential aim of the franchise agreement, which consists of cloning or copying the franchisor's company, including a complete outer identification of the franchise with the corporate image of such franchisor's company.

In addition to the immaterial or intangible, or even material, goods that constitute the object of the franchise agreement, there is also the provision of a body of technical knowledge and constant technical and commercial assistance – as established by the above mentioned section 1512 – which along with the above-mentioned elements makes it possible to commercialise goods or services by using the franchisor's proven system.

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