Porzio Ríos García > Santiago, Chile > Firm Profile

Porzio Ríos García > Firm Profile

The firm: The law firm Porzio, Rios, Garcia was founded in 1993, as Porzio, Ríos & Asociados, beginning its activities mainly in the intellectual property field. It was founded by Marino Porzio who, by that time had already gained extensive experience in the IP field as a consequence of an outstanding career in the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), where he was Deputy Director General for over nine years, before becoming President of its General Assembly. Its specialised professional services, together with the command of several languages, led its clients, both Chilean and foreign, to entrust the firm with legal matters in other fields of law, motivating the partners of the firm to develop additional areas of the legal profession in order to provide its clients with a full legal service, in addition to its traditional leading IP services. Porzio, Rios, Garcia consists of a team of lawyers who graduated from the most prestigious universities in the country, many of whom have completed graduate degrees in foreign universities. Many of them also act as arbitrators in domestic and international procedures, and are academics at the main law schools in the country.

Areas of practice
Corporate and commercial: The firm offers high quality services in the areas of general corporate and commercial law, which include custody and management of corporate books and registries; mergers and acquisitions and corporate restructuring; audit and due diligence reviews; joint-ventures; public and private bids; commercial representation contracts; concessions; dissolution and liquidation of companies; antitrust, free competition; consumer protection law; and real estate law.

Intellectual property:

• Patents, life sciences and plant varieties: The firm offers advice in the protection of foreign and local inventions, dealing in particular with pre-filing stage, including state of the art searches, feasibility and novelty analysis and drafting of patents. The firm regularly assists major pharmaceutical companies with registration and litigation matters. This department includes a qualified technical staff and scientists experienced in all fields of science and technology, many of them former examiners at the Chilean Patent Office. The firm also offers advice for the filing and prosecuting of applications for the registration of plant varieties with Chilean Agricultural Authority and eventual litigation in this field
• Trademarks, domain names and new technologies: A specialised team offers advice to foreign and national clients to device strategies for protecting their trademarks in Chile through the proper registration and defense. Additionally, the firm offers their clients services of filing and handling their foreign portfolio in other countries. A reliable domain names department protects trademarks on the Internet, obtaining an impressive rate of favorable decisions in arbitral assignation procedures. The firm also deals with new IP matters such as use of trademarks on social media and protection of the personal data on the internet
• Copyright, entertainment and advertisement: The firm assists its clients in the protection of their creations, giving advice in respect of the licensing and drafting of other related agreements. The firm also advises clients in the TV field and the rights on image issues. Notably, a specialised department deals with advertising self-regulatory matters

FInancial market: The firm offers advice to its clients in their debt and equity issuances, having expertise as well, assisting in the distribution of such securities and instruments. In addition, the firm has been involved in transactions such as IPOs, tender offers and securities issuances. The lawyers of the firm also assist its clients with their regulatory needs, acting as well in administrative proceedings with capital markets regulators and legal defense in stock exchange, derivatives and capital market litigation.

Labour and employment: The firm has a solid prestige in the areas of labour, employment, immigration and social security law. This expertise includes regulatory compliance, collective bargaining and labour relations involving unions; individual and collective contracts; unfair dismissal litigation; health and safety regulations, employee benefits, personal taxation, social security and pension law; global mobility, immigration laws, executive transfers and visa processing; labour revisions, M&A processes and harmonisation of corporate benefits as well as training workshops in labour matters.

Litigation: Composed of an experienced team, the litigation department of the firm engages in all kind of litigation, including civil, commercial, administrative, labour, insolvency, both domestic and international and in all fields of intellectual property, free competition and false advertisement. For the implementation of these tasks, the firm acts before different authorities of the government for all kind of administrative problems and disputes, and on pre-trial and trial instances acts before national courts at all levels, including the Supreme Court of Justice of the country, as well as in the sphere of arbitration tribunals.

Tax: The firm offers high quality tax consulting services to domestic and foreign corporations as well as to high-wealth individuals/families. Due to its comprehensive vision of legal services, the firm includes tax matters in all relevant advice, making sure that tax effects and contingencies are considered in all of its clients’ activities. The tax services provided by the firm include domestic and international tax planning, corporate restructuring, tax aspects of corporate practice due diligence, tax advice to family businesses, legal reports on tax matters and the defense of our clients in tax claims before the Chilean Internal Revenue Services and Courts of Justice”.

Trade and commerce: The firm advises in all areas of international trade law, commercial agreements, including distribution and franchising contracts, international taxation and customs law; free trade agreements; trade defense and WTO law; non-tariff barriers; and structuring of supply chain management.