Trademark Renewal in Chile: Deadlines, Process and What to Watch
Your Chilean trademark registration lasts 10 years — and if you miss the renewal window, it lapses automatically. Here is how trademark renewal in Chile works, the exact deadlines, and what foreign owners should watch.
Trademark Renewal in Chile: Deadlines, Process and What to Watch
📌 Quick answer: a trademark registration in Chile lasts 10 years from the date of registration and can be renewed indefinitely in 10-year periods. You can file with INAPI from 6 months before expiry up to 6 months after (grace period). Late filing carries a 20% surcharge per month or fraction. If the window closes without a renewal, the registration lapses by operation of law and the sign becomes available to third parties. |
A Chilean Trademark Lasts 10 Years — and Renewal Is Simpler Than Registration
Under Article 24 of the Chilean Industrial Property Law (Law 19.039), a trademark registration is valid for 10 years counted from the date of its recordal in the registry (not from the filing date), and the owner may renew it for successive periods of equal duration — in practice, indefinitely.
The good news: renewal is a conservatory act, not a new application. In fact, INAPI does not re-examine whether your mark is registrable and — since April 2017 — records the renewal as an annotation in the margin of the existing registration, so your mark keeps the same registration number.
A point that surprises many foreign owners: 📌 Chile does not require proof of use to renew. Instead, INAPI’s examination is limited to timeliness, payment of the fee, the identity between registered owner and applicant, and the scope of coverage.
The Renewal Window and the Six-Month Grace Period
The Chilean trademark renewal deadline works as a 12-month window built around the expiry date. Since Law 21.355 (in force since 9 May 2022), the owner may request renewal during the six months before the registration expires and up to six months counted from its expiration, for all types of marks. Before that reform, the grace period was only 30 days — update your docketing data if it still reflects the old rule.
| ⏰ Moment | What applies |
|---|---|
| 6 months before expiry | The renewal can be filed at the standard fee |
| Expiry date | Last day to renew without surcharge |
| Up to 6 months after expiry | Grace period: renewal still possible, with a 20% surcharge per month or fraction |
| After the grace period | The registration lapses automatically — renewal is no longer possible |
Indeed, filing early costs you nothing in protection: the renewed registration takes effect from the expiry date of the previous term — the new 10-year period always runs from the original expiration.
How to Renew a Trademark in Chile: Filing Before INAPI
To renew, you must file electronically through INAPI’s online platform, since paper filing is admitted only in exceptional cases. First, the filer logs in — with Clave Única or an INAPI password — and enters the registration number to be renewed.
Specifically, the form asks for the identification of the applicant (which must match the registered owner exactly), the denomination of the mark when it has a word element, and the registration number. Next, the system auto-fills the registration data, which cannot be edited — with one exception: the list of goods and services, which you may limit but never expand.
In addition, renewal can be total or partial: you may renew the full coverage, or drop classes or specific goods and services, understanding that whatever you leave out is deemed waived. INAPI will also check your coverage against the Nice Classification edition in force; if items have moved class, you may need to accept a reclassification and pay the fee for the additional class — never enlarging your original scope of protection.
A special case: old registrations for commercial or industrial establishments (a category eliminated by Law 21.355) are renewed as service marks in class 35 (retail) or class 40 (manufacturing).
Renewal Fees: 6 UTM per Class and the Late Surcharge
The renewal fee is 6 UTM per class covered by the registration (the UTM is Chile’s inflation-indexed monthly tax unit); advertising slogans pay a flat 6 UTM. This fee is paid together with the filing, online, to the Chilean Treasury.
If you file after the expiry date, the fee carries a surcharge of 20% for each month or fraction of a month elapsed since expiration — rising until it reaches 12 UTM per class (double) by the end of the grace period — a safety net, not a strategy. For a broader view of official fees, see our guide on how much it costs to register a trademark in Chile.
Who Can File — and the Power of Attorney Trap for Foreign Owners
The renewal may be filed by the registered owner or their representative; a lawyer is not legally required. If the filer is already recorded as your representative before INAPI, no new power of attorney is needed, unless the earlier power was limited in time or scope. Otherwise, a new representative must upload the corresponding power or reference its custody number at INAPI.
This is where foreign owners stumble. If INAPI raises an observation, you generally have 30 days to fix it — extended to 60 days for the power of attorney of an owner residing abroad. If you miss that deadline, the renewal is declared abandoned: the Industrial Property Court (TDPI, docket 1758-2025) upheld the abandonment of a foreign company’s renewal because a power-of-attorney observation was not remedied in time.
An abandonment can be challenged by reclamation before INAPI’s National Director within 5 business days; a rejection can be appealed to the TDPI within 15 days. You may also simply refile — if you are still inside the legal window.
What Happens If You Miss the Deadline
If no valid renewal is filed within the window, the consequences are automatic:
- The registration lapses by operation of law the moment the grace period ends — no INAPI resolution is needed.
- There is no retroactive effect — the registration remains valid for everything that happened while it was in force — but going forward you no longer own the mark in Chile.
- Dependent slogan registrations are cancelled ex officio along with the base mark.
- The sign becomes available. Any third party — a competitor, a former distributor, a squatter — may apply to register it. Recovering it means a brand-new application, full examination, possible oppositions, and lost seniority.
In short, a missed renewal can undo decades of investment. Therefore, serious portfolio management treats the trademark renewal in Chile date as a hard, monitored deadline.
Update Your Ownership Records Before You Renew
The renewal form does not allow you to change the owner’s name. If the company was renamed, merged, or the mark was assigned during the 10-year term, you must first record that change through a marginal annotation (recordal) — a renewal filed by someone other than the recorded owner is a non-correctable defect.
There is a safeguard for owners near the end of the window: once the recordal is filed, the renewal proceeding is suspended until the annotation is recorded, provided the renewal was filed within the legal term. Still, best practice is to check the registry data well in advance — request a registration certificate through INAPI’s portal — and clean up ownership records before the window opens.
How von Marttens® Handles Renewals for Foreign Trademark Owners
Renewing a trademark in Chile is procedurally simple — when everything is in order. However, what endangers registrations is everything around the filing: missed dockets, outdated owner data, expired powers of attorney, observations answered late. A local agent solves all of this: we docket and monitor your Chilean trademark renewal deadlines, verify the registry data beforehand, keep valid powers of attorney on file, file electronically and respond to any observation within term.
And we keep watching afterwards: through our brand monitoring service in Chile we track new applications that could conflict with your mark. If Chile is part of a wider portfolio, we can also coordinate protection abroad through the Madrid System.
🧠 Renewal Checklist for Trademark Owners
| Do you know the exact expiry date of each Chilean registration (10 years from recordal)? |
| Is the renewal docketed within the 6 months before expiry, avoiding the surcharge? |
| Do the owner’s details in INAPI’s registry match the current legal owner? |
| Are pending assignments, mergers or name changes recorded before renewal? |
| Is there a valid power of attorney on file for your Chilean representative? |
| Have you decided between total or partial renewal of the coverage? |
| Is someone monitoring the docket to answer observations within 30 (or 60) days? |
A trademark is one of the few assets that can be kept alive forever — but only if each 10-year renewal is filed on time, by the right person, with the registry in order. Overall, handling it professionally costs a fraction of rebuilding a brand lost to a missed date.
At von Marttens® we manage trademark portfolios for foreign and domestic owners before INAPI, with more than 300 registered trademarks. If your Chilean registration is approaching its 10-year mark — or you are not sure when it expires — contact us at vonmarttens.cl and we will handle the renewal from start to finish.
AI Usage Disclosure: This article was written by members of our team; however, AI tools were used to improve readability and structure the text for search engines.
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