Criminal Lawyers for Industrial Property Crimes
Defense against charges of patent infringement, trademark counterfeiting, and trade secret theft.
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Industrial property crimes (Articles 273-277 Criminal Code) protect patents, trademarks, industrial designs, and trade secrets through criminal sanctions. While many intellectual property disputes are handled through civil proceedings, criminal prosecution applies when the infringement is deliberate, commercial in scale, and causes significant economic harm to the rights holder.
Types and Penalties
Patent infringement (Art. 273 CP): usurping a patent, utility model, or semiconductor topography for industrial or commercial purposes carries imprisonment of 6 months to 2 years and a fine. Trademark counterfeiting (Art. 274 CP): reproducing, imitating, or using registered trademarks carries the same penalty. Trade secret theft (Art. 278-280 CP): discovering, revealing, or exploiting trade secrets carries 2 to 4 years imprisonment.
Defense Strategies
Our defense approaches include: challenging the validity of the underlying right (expired patents, non-distinctive trademarks, questionable trade secret status); proving independent development (the client developed their product or process without knowledge of the protected right); demonstrating lack of commercial intent (personal use, research, or academic purposes); arguing exhaustion of rights (parallel imports, first sale doctrine); and establishing the absence of consumer confusion (for trademark cases).
Economic Criminal Law in Spain: Tax Fraud, Money Laundering and Corporate Crimes
Economic criminal law encompasses the most severe financial penalties in the Spanish Criminal Code. Tax fraud over €120,000 (Art. 305 CP), money laundering (Art. 301 CP), and corporate crimes (Art. 290-297 CP) are complex offenses where defense requires a combination of criminal law expertise and deep accounting/financial knowledge.
Penalty Comparison: Economic Offenses
| Offense | Threshold | Penalty |
|---|---|---|
| Tax Fraud (Art. 305) | >€120,000 | 1 – 5 years + fine x6 |
| Aggravated Tax Fraud | >€600,000 | 2 – 6 years |
| Money Laundering (Art. 301) | Any amount | 6 months – 6 years |
| Aggravated Laundering | Organized/financial system | Up to 9 years |
| Corporate Crime (Art. 290) | Balance sheet falsification | 1 – 3 years |
| Punishable Insolvency (Art. 259) | Fraudulent bankruptcy | 1 – 4 years |
Key Defense Strategies
Tax Regularization Defense (Art. 305.4 CP)
Pay the full tax debt before charges are formally filed and the crime is extinguished. This is the most powerful complete defense in tax fraud cases.
Challenge the €120K Threshold
The tax authority's calculation method is often contestable. Independent forensic accounting can challenge the assessed figure below the criminal threshold.
Money Laundering 'Self-laundering' Issues
Spanish courts have debated whether the primary offender can also be convicted of laundering their own proceeds. Challenge the double jeopardy implications.
Corporate Crime: Harm to Company vs. Shareholders
Art. 295 corporate crimes require actual financial harm to the company or its members. Demonstrate that any loss was speculative or absent.
Why Choose Us?
Need a criminal defense lawyer for this type of offense? Here's how we work:
Do you need specialised legal assistance?
The judicial system is complex. We have the criminal-law specialisation and technical resources required to take on the defence.