Chile is not a party to the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).

Chile has a copyright regime under Law No. 17,336. However, the exceptions do not follow the fair use or fair dealing model and, therefore, limit third parties' lawful use of copyrighted works. Title III lists the exceptions, including the reproduction of: lawfully published works which are made for the benefit of persons with visual, hearing or other disabilities; works of architecture by means of photography, cinema, television and any other analogous procedure, as well as the publication of the corresponding photographs in newspapers, magazines and books and texts intended for education; among others.

There are concerns about the adequacy and effectiveness of the protection and enforcement of IP in Chile. Furthermore, there are concerns about the lack of effective remedies to deal with the illegal circumvention of technological protection measures and about an ineffective Internet Service Provider liability regime against online piracy. Chile passed legislation establishing criminal penalties for the importation, commercialisation, and distribution of decoding devices used for the theft of encrypted program-carrying satellite signals, but it is reported that it lacks information about the full scope of activities criminalised in the implementation of the law and that it should provide remedies or penalties for willfully receiving or further distributing illegally decoded encrypted program-carrying satellite signals. Concerns remain regarding the availability of effective administrative and judicial procedures, and deterrent-level remedies to rightholders and satellite service providers. In addition, it is reported that the rate of unlicensed software installation in the country was 55% in 2017 (above the 52% rate of the Latin American countries) for an estimated commercial value of USD 283 million.

Chile has ratified the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Copyright Treaty.

Chile has ratified the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Performances and Phonograms Treaty.

Act No. 19,039 provides a framework for the effective protection of trade secrets. Arts. 86-88 refer to trade secrets as business secrets. A trade secret is any knowledge relating to products or industrial processes that, when kept secret, confers on its holder a competitive advantage. In order to claim the protection that the Chilean law grants to holders of trade secrets, it is necessary to meet these three requirements: 1) the information should always remain secret, which means that it should not be generally known or readily accessible to third parties; 2) the information must have trade value –or at least potential commercial value– for the SME, and it should be linked to the fact it is secret; 3) the holder of the trade secret must take “reasonable steps” to protect the information as confidential.

Chile is not a signatory of the 1996 World Trade Organization (WTO) Information Technology Agreement (ITA) nor the 2015 expansion (ITA II).

According to Art. 67 of Decree No. 250, the tendering agency may establish the obligation to constitute a company of Chilean nationality or an agency in case a foreign company wins a public tender.

Chile is not a party to the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA). However, the country has been an observer of the WTO GPA since 1997.

Act No. 20,848 sets forth that foreign investors shall be treated in the same manner as local investors. Consequently, it is forbidden to discriminate against a foreign investor or a company that is majority- or minority-owned by these types of investors. Art. 9 states that foreign investors are subject to the same legal regime as national investors without arbitrary discrimination.

According to the App Transportation Companies Act (EAT), which regulates paid passenger transportation services offered through applications, any company wishing to provide passenger transportation services through applications must be registered in the Registry of App Transportation Companies supervised by the Ministry of Transport and Telecommunications and be domiciled in Chile (Art. 4).
According to Art. 1, an application transport company covers any legal person that provides or makes available to persons a digital platform service, computer system or technology of any kind which allows a passenger to contact the owner, manager or driver of a small passenger transport vehicle, to be transported from a given origin to a given destination, upon payment of a fee for the service received.

Under Art. 5 of the Fintech Law, the entry into the Financial Market Commission (CMF) Register of Financial Service Providers is a prerequisite for the provision of technology-based financial services, including (a) crowdfunding platforms, (b) the operation of alternative trading systems, (c) credit and investment advice, (d) custody of financial instruments and (e) order routing and financial instrument intermediation. International businesses providing these services must be domiciled in Chile. Art. 5 mentions some entities exempt from this requirement.

Art. 2 of the Industrial Property Act states that natural or legal persons residing abroad must designate a proxy or representative in Chile to file a patent application. A patent must be registered with the National Institute for Industrial Property (INAPI). An application should be filed before the invention is disclosed to the public. A prior foreign application can be invoked in Chile within a certain period of time. The patent must fulfil three main requirements: novelty, level of invention, and industrial application.