SIGN UP FOR OUR – Inventor of the Canopy Tour® recovers invention patent in Costa Rica after lengthy legal battle, meaning local tour operators must receive authorization to continue to offer such tours in Costa Rica.
After almost 20 years of wrangling through the administrative and judicial channels in Costa Rica, a legal resolution ended the conflict that arose after the canopy patent held by Canadian national Darren Hreniuk, inventor of the Canopy Tour®, was annulled in December 2004. The legal decision recently delivered returned Hreniuk the exclusive right to exploit this tourist activity, according to a press release this week.
In October 1998, the Industrial Property Registry at the National Registry, granted the owner the invention patent of the canopy for a 20-year term; however, by virtue of several nullity proceedings carried out by third parties, the patent was arbitrarily canceled in 2004.
The May 31 resolution returns exclusive rights to Hreniuk to commercially exploit canopy tours in Costa Rica for the entire period granted by the patent. In addition, the resolution states that the Costa Rican government must compensate him for damages caused in 2005 and for the years following the annulment of the patent. The amount of this compensation shall be calculated by experts during the sentence execution stage, said the press release.
“The judicial decision confirms that the resolution that canceled the patent was issued by a body that lacked the substantive competence to do so; in addition, it was well established within the judicial file that the requirements of novelty, inventive level and industrial application necessary for the granting of the patent were fulfilled. The illegal cancellation of the patent prevented the inventor from exploiting with exclusivity the canopy tours he built, and from charging authorized canopy tours the royalty amounts established by the patentee at US $15 for foreign tourists and US $10 for nationals,” said Jorge Mario Marín Barquero, legal representative of Hreniuk.
He added that now Hreniuk will focus on working with the country’s tour operators to further develop the Canopy Tour ™ industry, which will bring direct benefits to the Costa Rican tourism sector, and to the country as a whole. “What we want is that the main beneficiary be Costa Rica and the national tourism sector, so our desire is to encourage greater specialization in Canopy operations so that this activity becomes increasingly attractive for tourists,” said Marín Barquero.
Based on this resolution, the owners of all canopy tours operating in the country must request authorization from the patent holder to continue their operations. To do this, companies who employ the activity must approach the inventor to reach an agreement.
“We will give a reasonable timeframe of 15 business days, starting from this June 1, 2017, so that the owners and businesses who have canopy tours on their sites can contact the inventor and reach an agreement to authorize the commercial exploitation of the invention,” said Barquero.
If tour operators don’t comply with the sentence returned Hreniuk the patent, they could be liable for sanctions ranging from the cancellation of their web pages or even risk closure of their businesses, since they would be using the invention without authorization.
To contact the negotiators, owners of canopy tours in Costa Rica should write via email, <patente2532@gmail.
Background on the Case
The Public Registry of Industrial Property at National Registry granted Darren Hreniuk, inventor of the Canopy Tour activity, a patent for the invention called “A system of high forest transport via gravity propulsion, using harness pulleys over simple horizontal cables,” known as “Canopy,” on October 20, 1998.
The first Canopy in Costa Rica was established by Hreniuk in the 1990s in Monteverde. It is estimated that of the total number of tourists (2,099,829) who entered the country in 2010, more than 890,327 people made canopy that year, becoming the fifth adventure tourism activity of preference, according to data from the Costa Rican Tourism Institute (ICT, its initials in Spanish).
