Matias Valenzuela > Covarrubias > Las Condes, Chile > Lawyer Profile

IP and technology-focused firm Covarrubias houses practitioners who ‘always strive to offer commercially pragmatic solutions’. The 11-member IP department handles patents, life sciences, trade marks, domain names and copyright. It also fields specialists in new technologies, data protection and litigation. The group recently advised telecoms multinational Telefónica on a potential opposition to a trade mark application. The practice’s key figures are esteemed founding partner Arturo Covarrubias, an expert in industrial property and copyright-related protection strategies, as well as industrial property litigation involving the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, tissue paper, food, retail and telecoms sectors; trade mark and domain name specialist Sofía Covarrubias, who heads the firm’s international trade mark department and ‘has vast experience in IP’. In the firm’s associate team, biochemist and patent group leader Matías Valenzuela focuses on the protection of patents for chemical, pharmaceutical and biotechnology-related inventions. Growth for the practice includes the late 2023 recruitment of trade mark and domain name associate Felipe Maldonado from IP registry Simple Marcas; and Universidad de Santiago professor and copyright and industrial property contract expert, Gabriel Vargas. Former associates Camilo Cammas and Diego Bilbao left the firm in December 2023 and March 2024, respectively (with Bilbao replaced in the litigation department by recent associate hire Paulina Espinoza).

Covarrubias‘ ‘quality of work is impeccable and the responses to queries are very clear’. Founded in 2010, the IP-focused firm’s broad life sciences expertise ranges from the agriculture, biochemistry and biotechnology sectors, to the energy, forestry and genetics industries. The three-member practice is also home to specialists in microbiology, molecular biology, neuroscience and pharmaceuticals, as well as research and investigation work. The group is additionally active in the regulatory aspects of food, cosmetics and medical devices; and routinely files, processes and attains rights for plant varieties, along with defending such protected varieties before the courts. ‘A one-stop-shop for the pharmaceutical industry in Chile’, the practice recently advised South Korean pharmaceutical company Hanmi Pharmaceutical Co on the filing of an invention patent application. Founding partner Arturo Covarrubias advises on industrial property and copyright-related protection strategies, as well as industrial property litigation involving the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, tissue paper, food, retail and telecoms sectors. In the associate ranks, (non-legal) senior Matías Valenzuela is a patent expert, who ‘stands out as a biochemist with extensive experience in the chemical, pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors’; and litigation department head Diego Bilbao focuses on administrative, civil, arbitration and criminal litigation, in relation to industrial property, copyright and unfair competition.