Following all the actions involved in the registration of Robert, and to protect the character of the story, the next step I took was to register Roberto as a brand and as a design. This is done through the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office (OEPM). And here begins a little odyssey inside my big adventure …

Last Saturday morning I went to the OEPM headquarters for information about how to register a character of an animated short film. The OEPM is an enormous building in Nuevos ministerios (Madrid) but, despite being visible from anywhere in the great square headed by the Corte Inglés of Castellana, is very complicated to find the entrance. I climbed a staircase leading to a maze of corridors dead ended, and surrounded as best I could the horrific building up to a door. It was closed with welded metal plates,and only glimpsed through the windows a huge office apparently abandoned eons ago. However, unshaken in my determination, I searched around a sign from God that threw some light of hope on my disappointed stamp. Et voilà! A small sign “Entrance”, and below an icon indicating downstairs. In front of me inaccessible fire stairs, alternatively retrace my steps and go downstairs again. I chose the second option and, once returned to the starting point, peered in the distance a possible entry into the OEPM. I went there with my folder full of drawings of Roberto under one arm.

This time I was more fortunate, and the door was the right one. After passing my bag though a bomb detector and pass my body through a weapons detector, a security officer asked me about what I came to do. The truth is that I felt a little stupid, and timidly said I just wanted some information. “First floor, upstairs.” I went upstairs and came to the first floor, where a huge empty desk was waiting for me.

With my terrible forgetfulness, I get closer to an old woman, and told her my story. Look, I’m making an animated short film, and I would like to reegister the main character. It took us about  15 minutes to understand each other (easy to say, but 15 minutes talking to an government employee is an eternity). The woman offered me vague and even contradictory choices of what to do, always decorated with millions of data that, apart of clashing in my head and confuse me more, always give the impression that you have been helped a lot because YOU HAVE RECEIBED A LOT OF INFORMATION. So, she ended up giving me a brochure that I have not yet dared to browse, and a note with an URL to which I grabbed as if all the answers of the universe were there … This is what I have, I see an URL and reassure me: Internet, computer, house, quiet to read everything slowly …

The truth is that I left the building quite confused, and with few hints of what to do. As I noted below, the little that I understood that day was not correct at all.

[TO BE CONTINUED...]