With the approval of the rules of the PPP law (public private partnerships) the executive power established the launching of what they called “competitive dialogue”, an innovative relation between the State and private parties to unblock productive infrastructure and social works.

The Legatum prosperity index studies 110 countries and 8 variables which have effects on the economic growth or wellbeing of societies: economy, health, education, security, business opportunities, governability, social capital and personal freedom.

In the last five years the so called BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) multiplied their purchases to Uruguay by more than 2.5. Exports of goods to those markets in 2011 totaled more than USD 2.712 million after a strong increase of 177% in five years, sensibly higher than the general increase in sales in the period, 101% according to data provided by Uruguay XXI.

2011 has been very positive for our firm and therefore for our clients. Even though one of the great problems of last year was that the DNPI (National Directorate of Industrial Property) was extremely behind schedule with all its files, which was detrimental to all the parts involved, we have managed to diminish said damages through the application of different alternatives and solutions. One of these was to search and identify solutions through private agreements between parties.

During this year, exports have grown 18.4% in relation to the same period in 2010 and imports have grown 39%. This means a total of US$8.030 million which results in a deficit of US$ 1.137 million in the trade balance.

The Court of Administrative Litigation (TCA for its acronym in spanish) has ruled in favor of the Spanish company Telefónica (Movistar) due to a complaint filling against ANTEL, the State Telecommunication Company in Uruguay. ANTEL was forced to stop using a mobile phone frequency which has been used since 2005 in a non- legitimate way.

The Patent and Trademark Office, (DNPI for its acronym in spanish) dismissed the opposition presented by CLOROX ARGENTINA S.A against the application for registration of the trademark POET, owned by MOTOROLA, INC (US), considering that there was confusion with the trademarks POETT and POETT (et).

In a recent case, the Patent and Trademark Office (DNPI for its acronym in spanish) upheld the opposition presented by THE POLO/LAUREN COMPANY L.P (USA) against the SANTA MARIA POLO trademark registration in classes 3,14,18,25 and 41 due to the similarities found between this trademark which is property of POLOTEN TEXTIL S.A and POLO and POLO (et.) trademarks.

In August export requests totaled US$ 783 million dollars, representing an increase of 29 % over the same month of last year. So far this year, foreign sales totaled US$ 5.395 million.