Arquivos do Mês: August 2018

The BPTO published on August 21, 2018, the Rule #223/2018 implementing the PPH Pilot program with the DKPTO, that intends to speed up the examination of pending Brazilian applications with an application from the same nature allowed by the DKPTO.
The Program will accept applications belonging to patent families whose earliest application has been filed at the BPTO or the DKPTO or, in case of a PCT application, the BPTO or DKPTO was the receiving office.
The program will accept applications from the technical field of “Engineering, illumination, heating, guns and explosion”. The application must be classified under the IPC code F#, with the exception of drug-related applications (A61K) which are not allowed in this program.
To be accepted on the BPTO-DKPTO PPH Pilot Program, the application must:
i) Have been filed for more than 18 months or published by the WIPO (when applicable);
ii) Have the corresponding technical exam duly paid; (in case of divided patent applications, they must request priority procedure to all of them);
The participation of the application in the BPTO-DKIPO PPH Pilot Program shall be requested by any or all the applicants.
The BPTO-DKPTO PPH Pilot Program starts on September 01, 2018 and will receive applications up to August 31, 2020. Each applicant can only file one patent application per month, except during the last month of the project, when there will be no limit of the number of applications per applicant. The project is limited to 100 applications accepted into the BPTO-UKIPO PPH program per year (limit of 200 accepted applications during the entire program).
Amongst other documents requested by Rule #223/2018, the applicant must submit with the application, documents proving that the application meets the requirements and a table including the correspondences between the BR application claims and the DK allowed claims and a copy of non-patentary prior art documents.
The BPTO will evaluate the applications according to its request date, and applications that do not meet the requirements will either be given the opportunity to correct any irregularity, case in which the BPTO will issue an office action which must be replied to within 60 days, or be denied participation in the PPH Pilot Program, case in which it will return to the regular line of examination.
The original Portuguese version of Rule #223/2018 is available here.

The South Korean manufacturer Hyundai registered the new generation of the three-door Veloster hatch in Brazil through the Brazilian Patents and Trademarks Office (BPTO).

The magazine Valor Inovação Brasil included in its fourth edition a new criterion in its evaluation methodology: The inclusion of patents published by the Brazilian PTO in the year of 2017. Such inclusion extended the analysis capacity, making some companies stand out in the ranking, according to specialists.
This is the case, among others, of CNH Industrial – which advanced from 54th to 13th position; Vale, from the 42nd to the 17th position; Microsoft, from the 79th to the 18th; and Petrobras, which moved from 11th place last year to 3rd place. The methodology is specific to the Brazilian market and allows to separate truly innovative companies from those that are following technological trends.
Of the 216 companies registered, 82% have revenues above R$ 1 billion (approximately US$ 270 million). The sample was divided into 21 sectors – three more than in 2017. From the area of Oil and Gas the companies of Mining, Metallurgy and Steel Industry left, forming a new group. The Banking segment, separated from financial services, also gained its own section, as well as Transport and Logistics. Another change was the sector Industries, Chemical and Petrochemical, is now called Chemistry, Petrochemical, Packaging, Paper and Cellulose.
The original publication (in Portuguese) can be found here