1 April 2013Jurisdiction reportsMaria Alice Calliari and Liliane Roriz

A welcome modernisation of the Brazilian patent office

Until a couple of years ago, Brazilian attitudes towards the importance of IP were unclear. This had an influence on INPI’s role, its benchmarks and the country’s IP and development policies.

This scenario started to change a few years ago and innovation has become important to boosting economic growth. This change has had a strong impact on the INPI administration.

Within the next 10 years, INPI aims to be among the world’s nine largest patent and trademark offices. Time will tell whether this is possible. The reality is that INPI is already moving towards its goal, and it considers modernisation a strategic aspect of this drive.

An important recent step came on December 31, 2012, with the revision and consolidation of all the INPI guidelines and regulations, called ‘normative acts’.

The new regime is the official standard to be observed by external and internal users, since it was published on March 9, 2013.

One hundred and twelve different acts were issued: 79 of them are presidential resolutions, the first of which formally revoked all previous guidelines and regulations. Of the other 78, 34 are about the INPI’s internal administration, making 44 resolutions of real interest to users.

Among these 44, Resolution 11 establishes the fees schedule, maintaining the same prices while bringing in a discount for electronic patent filings, and Resolution 22 regulates INPI’s electronic Gazette.

All other 42 resolutions are about the prosecution of specific IP rights, such as trademarks (10) and patents (18). The manual of examining guidelines is covered by Resolution 28 (trademarks) and Resolution 64 (patents).

Patent prosecution

Resolution 14 created different patent examining lines and procedures for the first office action, in order to reduce the office’s backlog. Resolution 62 set up the e-patent system and Resolution 75 established priority examination for green patent applications.

Five lines were created by Resolution 14:

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