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Arturo Alessandri Besa

was born on October 31, 1923. He was the son of Arturo Alessandri Rodríguez and Raquel Besa Montt. Therefore, he was the grandson of former President of the Republic Arturo Alessandri Palma and nephew of former President Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez.

He attended school at The Grange School and then joined the Law School of Universidad de Chile. In July 1949 he was sworn in before the Supreme Court to become a lawyer. “The nullity and rescission in Chilean civil law” was the title of his final project.

In his private career he worked at Alessandri Abogados, focused on industrial property, trademarks and patents of invention. In 1976 he was appointed vice-president of the Interamerican Association of Industrial Property (ASIPI) until 1979.

In his last years he was counselor of the firm.

/ Political and public career

He was elected representative for the Second Departmental Grouping of Antofagasta, Tocopilla, El Loa and Taltal in the 1973 parliamentary elections, representing the Partido Nacional.

In 1989 he was elected independent senator, part of the pact Democracia y Progreso, representing the Second Senatorial District, with 41,672 votes (42% of the votes validly cast).

In the 1993 presidential elections, he ran as an independent candidate supported by the Alianza Unión por el Progreso de Chile, formed by Renovación Nacional, Unión de Centro-Centro, Unión Demócrata Independiente and Partido del Sur e Independientes parties. He obtained 1,701,324 votes (24.41% of the votes validly cast). Finally, the President of Chile from 1994 to 2000 was Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, who obtained 4,040,497 votes (57.98% of the votes).

/ Memberships

  • Member of the Chilean Bar Association since 1949. He was a member of its council between 1977 and 1978.
  • In 1983 he was appointed Honorary Consul of Singapore in Chile.
  • He was a member of the American Intellectual Property Lawyers Association (AIPLA), the Council of the International Federation of Industrial Property (FICPI), the Chilean Association of Industrial Property (ACHIPI), the International Trademark Association (INTA).
  • In the cultural field, he was vice-president of the Municipal Theater, founding member of the Friends of the Opera Club and advisor to the Cultural Corporation of the Municipality of Santiago.
  • In 2014, he was elected the best lawyer in Intellectual Property by the publication Best Lawyers 2014.

/ Interview with Arturo Alessandri Besa by his son Arturo Alessandri Cohn

What inspired you to pursue a career in intellectual property?

I started my career in intellectual property law around 1945, even before I graduated from law school and obtained my degree and license to practice law in 1949. I used to work with my father at the Alessandri law firm founded in 1893 by my grandfather, Arturo Alessandri Palma; since my father did not speak English, he asked me to respond to letters sent to him in English, most of which concerned patent and trademark filing instructions. So I personally initiated the appropriate steps for filing applications and oppositions, among other things. This personal exposure to administrative procedures turned out to be of utmost importance and formed the basis for the systems I later developed to keep clients informed about the relevant steps in the proceedings. In those early days I never imagined the importance intellectual property would have today, nor the technological revolution that would unfold as innovators have become increasingly eager to protect their inventions and innovations through patents, utility models and industrial designs, among other things.

Read the interview in this article:
IAM Patents: Arturo Alessandri Besa is the first Chilean in the Intellectual Property Hall of Fame.