Real Property
The Constitution of the Dominican Republic recognizes and guarantees the right to own private property and provides that the state shall promote the acquisition of property, especially titled real property. The Constitution further provides that it is “in the public interest that land be devoted to useful purposes and that large estates (latifundios) be gradually eliminated,” and that the social policy of the state shall promote land reform and effectively integrate the rural population to the national development process by encouraging renewal of agricultural production.
The government advises that investors are ultimately responsible for due diligence and recommends partnering with experienced attorneys to ensure that all documentation ranging from title searches to surveys have been properly verified and processed. In the last five years, the Dominican government has instituted a number of reforms, including the development of a cadaster with digitized property titles and the establishment and expansion of 23 land registry offices across the country. In 2012 the government created the State Lands Titling Commission, which, working with the Dominican Agrarian Institute, is intended to achieve the titling of around 150,000 urban and rural properties.
Under Dominican Republic law, all land must be registered; all unregistered land is considered state land. Registration requires 6 steps, an average of 45 days, and payment of 3.7 percent of the value of the land as a registration fee. The landowner is required to have a survey of the land, a certificate demonstrating that property taxes are current, and a certificate from the Title Registry Office that evidences any encumbrances on the land (such as mortgages or easements) and serves as a check on the extent of land rights to be transferred.
Land tenure insecurity persists, fueled by government land expropriations, institutional weaknesses, lack of effective law enforcement, and local community support for land invasions and squatting. Despite the requirement of land registration, most land in the Dominican Republic is not registered, and even if land rights are registered, tenure is not assured. In some parts of the country, unregistered land has been expropriated for development without notice or compensation. In some cases, however, holders of title certificates have received little or no additional security. Long-standing titling practices–such as issuing provisional titles that are never completed, or providing title to land to multiple owners without requiring individualization of parcels–have created substantial ambiguity in property rights and undermined the reliability of land records. Some of these practices have been curtailed in the last few years, but nonetheless undermine the reliability of existing land documentation. In addition, the country has struggled to control fraud in the creation and registration of land titles, including illegal operations within the government agencies responsible for issuing titles.
In the last decade, the GoDR has implemented reform programs focused on developing institutional frameworks and strengthening government agencies and public administration. As part of its overarching program to modernize the justice sector, the Dominican Republic Supreme Court modernized its property title registration process through a $10 million USD Inter American Development Bank (IDB) loan in an effort to address deficiencies and gaps in the land administration system and strengthen land tenure security. The project involved digitization of land records, decentralization of registries, establishment of a fund to compensate people for title errors, separation of the legal and administrative functions within the agency, and redefinition of the roles and responsibilities of judges and courts.
Intellectual Property Rights
The Dominican Republic has a legal structure with laws and sanctions adequate to protect copyrights and has improved the regulatory framework for patent and trademark protection. However, United States industry representatives continue to cite a lack of enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR) and common infringement on and theft of IPR as a major concern, validating the Dominican Republic’s placement on the United States Trade Representative’s Special 301 Watch list.
During the past year, no new IPR related laws or regulations have been enacted. There are no reform bills pending.
Key issues include rampant television signal broadcast piracy, insufficient enforcement actions against the manufacturers of counterfeit pharmaceuticals and other products, a backlog of patents waiting for approval, and weak customs enforcement of counterfeit trafficking. The Dominican government committed, in a side-letter to CAFTA-DR, to take measures to halt television broadcast piracy and agreed to report on its efforts in this regard in a quarterly report to the U.S. Embassy and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). The Dominican authorities have delivered these quarterly reports since January 2005.
To fulfill CAFTA-DR requirements, the Dominican Congress passed legislation in November 2006 to strengthen the IPR protection regime by criminalizing end-user piracy and requiring authorities to seize, forfeit, and destroy counterfeit and pirated goods, as well as the equipment used to produce those goods. CAFTA-DR mandates both statutory and actual damages for copyright and trademark infringement, and requires measures to help ensure that monetary damages can be awarded even when it is difficult to assign a monetary value to the infringement.
Customs officers have ex officio authority to seize any goods suspected as counterfeit. Prior to destroying counterfeit goods, customs officers must notify the rights holder. During this time, the goods are stored by customs, which charges the rights holder for storage. The rights holder then has 30 days to inspect the shipment and try to reach an agreement with the sender and manufacturer. At the end of the 30 days, if no agreement has been reached, then the rights holder can pay to send the items back or to have them destroyed. In the vast majority of cases, the counterfeit items are destroyed by customs after 30 days, and customs ends up bearing the cost of the destruction.
For additional information about treaty obligations and points of contact at local IP offices, please see WIPO’s country profiles at http://www.wipo.int/directory/en/.
Resources for Rights Holders
Contact at Mission:
Timothy McNally
Economic Officer
(809) 567-7775, extension 7582
mcnallyts@state.gov
Country/Economy resources:
List of Attorneys in the Dominican Republic, compiled by the Consular Section of the U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo: http://photos.state.gov/libraries/dominicanrepublic/66631/acs/attorneys.pdf
American Chamber of Commerce of the Dominican Republic
(809) 381-0777
comunicaciones@amcham.org.do
National Copyright Office (ONDA)
Ministry of Culture
Edificio del Archivo General de la Nación
Calle Modesto Diaz No. 2
Zona Universitaria
Santo Domingo, D.N.
(809) 2746-006
admin.onda@onda.gov.do
National Office of Industrial Property (ONAPI)
Ministry of Industry and Commerce
Av. Los Próceres No.11,
Santo Domingo, D.N.
(809) 567-7474
servicioalcliente@onapi.gob.do
http://onapi.gob.do/