Brazil patent examination: Defying the backlog

For many years, the Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office (INPI) has been facing a huge backlog of pending patent applications. Currently, a patent application takes 11 years to be granted, on average; depending on the technical field, a grant decision can be even longer.

Needless to say this delay poses serious drawbacks and damage to companies’ enforcement strategies, assets value, and business planning, etc.

Given this serious situation, the INPI, over the last three years, has issued several fast-track programmes and has also adopted a pre-examination office action. Although these programmes do not solve the backlog problem itself, the fast-track programmes and the pre-examination office action offer some important options for applicants to try to overcome the long years waiting for examination.

The most important fast-track programmes are summarised in this article.

Green patents

This programme is focused on expediting examination of patent applications that refer to environmentally friendly or sustainable technologies.