Month: July 2018

The Brazilian PTO implements PPH Program with the UKIPO

The BPTO published on July 24, 2018, the Rule #222/2018 implementing the PPH Pilot program with the UKIPO, that intends to speed up the examination of pending Brazilian applications with an application from the same nature allowed by the UKIPO.

The Program will accept applications belonging to patent families whose earliest application has been filed at the BPTO or the UKIPO or, in case of a PCT application, the BPTO or UKIPO was the receiving office.

The program will accept application from the technical field of “Biotechnology”, ” Machinery and electrical devices, energy “, “Audiovisual Technology”, “Telecommunications”, “Digital Communication”, “Basic Communication Processes” , “Computer Technology”, “IT Methods for Management” and “Semiconductors”. The application must be classified under the IPC codes list to be accepted, with the exception of drug-related applications which are not allowed in this program .

The table below summarizes the International Patent Classifications accepted by this program:

TECHNICAL AREA IPC CODE
Biotechnology (C07G, C07K, C12M, C12N, C12P, C12Q, C12R, C12S) except A61K
Machinery and electrical devices, energy F21#, H01B, H01C, H01F, H01G, H01H, H01J, H01K, H01M, H01R, H01T, H02#, H05B, H05C, H05F, H99Z
Audiovisual Technology G09F, G09G, G11B, H04N-003, H04N-005, H04N-009, H04N-013, H04N-015, H04N-017, H04R, H04S, H05K
Telecommunications G08C, H01P, H01Q, H04B, H04H, H04J, H04K, H04M, H04N-001, H04N-007, H04N-011, H04Q
Digital Communication H04L
Basic Communication Processes H03#
Computer Technology (G06# except G06Q), G11C, G10L
Information Technolgy Methods for Management G06Q
Semiconductors H01L


To be accepted on the BPTO-UKIPO 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-UKIPO PPH Pilot Program shall be requested by any or all the applicants.

The BPTO-UKIPO PPH Pilot Program starts on August 01, 2018 and will receive applications up to July 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 number of applications for 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 #222/2018, the applicant must submit with the application, documents proving that the application meets the requirements; a table including the correspondences between the BR application claims and the UK 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 #222/2018 is available here.

Brazilian Supreme Court will judge ‘pipeline’ patents

An action that questions the constitutionality of the legal provisions dealing with pipeline patents should be tried in September. Also called import or revalidation patents, they were granted to patented products abroad, but these patents were already in the public domain.
The justification of the Brazilian General Attorney of the Republic (PGR) is that these legal provisions allowed patents granted abroad to be automatically applied in Brazil without substantial verification of the qualities and innovations of the product, with a maximum duration of 20 years. More than 1,100 patent applications were granted automatically in 1997. But, today, they have fallen into the public domain.
One of the arguments about unconstitutionality is precisely in its legal nature, since it seeks to make patentable, to the detriment of the principle of novelty, that which is already in the public domain, promoting the legislator, thus, a kind of expropriation of a common good of the people without any constitutional protection.
According to such experts, pipeline patents favored foreign multinationals that privatized – without paying anything to the treasury – technology that was already in the public domain.
Tha judgement would be important to show that the Brazilian Supreme Court understands that it is not possible to enact a law and give patents to technologies that were already old, and already known, in this way, it would be possible to recognize the nullity of patents and the consequent return of money that was sent abroad.
Others claim that these patents are constitutional since all necessary requirements for them to be valid were fulfilled. The revalidation regime abroad is not an exclusivity of Brazil. Any decision to the contrary would generate much legal uncertainty, according to other experts.
The official publication about this case can be found here

Brazil ranks 64th in global innovation ranking

Brazil has gained a better position in the world ranking of innovation organized by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in partnership with Cornell University and the Insead business school. The country ranks 64th out of 126 listed economies.  Compared to the 18 Latin American and Caribbean economies, Brazil appears in the sixth position. Switzerland is the leader in the ranking, followed by Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom, Singapore, the USA, Finland, Denmark Germany and Ireland.
According to the publication, the Brazilian raise, which went from the 69th position to the current 64th, was due to an increase in research and development expenses, high technology imports and exports and the quality of national scientific information. In this topic, the study emphasized the materials published by the University of São Paulo (USP), Campinas (Unicamp) and also the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ).
Methodology
The Global Innovation Index (GII) ranks 126 economies and classify based on 80 indicators, from patent fees to the development of smartphone applications, education spending, and scientific and technical publications.
You can read the official publication at the WIPO’s website here

BPTO’s production grows strongly in the first semester of 2018

During the first half of 2018, the BPTO’s production grew strongly compared to the same period of 2017. This increase also allowed the total number of decisions between January and June of this year to be above the current demand of the same period, leading to a reduction in waiting time.

Considering only grants, the most significant increase in the first half of 2018 was in industrial design, which reached 111.9%, going from 2,355 to 4,990 grants.

In the area of patents, the grants between January and June of 2018 grew 81.7%, rising from 3,164 to 5,749. In trademarks, the number of grants was 71.6% higher, increasing from 49,598 to 85,099.

In addition, the number of registration of computer programs increased from 2,670 to 3,270, with a 22.5% variation.

When considering the total number of decisions of the BPTO (grants, rejections, and filings), the numbers are equally expressive. These results show that, with more decisions than requests in the first half of this year, the tendency is to reduce the stock and, therefore, the waiting time until the grant.

In this comparison between decisions and applications from January to June 2018, trademark decisions (179,185) were 82.3% higher than the requests in the period (98,297). In patents, decisions (19,884) exceeded applications (13,574) by 46.5%.

With the implementation of the electronic application, the computer program service also had an excellent result: production (3,270) was 199.7% higher than the 1,091 applications.

In industrial design, the total decisions reached 6,962, or 144.5% above the 2,848 applications in the first half of the year.

*Translated and adapted from the BPTO’s official web page. You can read more here

Brazilian Institute Butantan will export dengue vaccine to the world

With a patent filed in the United States, Butantan Institute will be able to export the vaccine technology to the Northern Hemisphere, that is currently facing dengue cases. In this way, the project will gain even more international visibility.
According to the Institute’s director, the vaccine development started in 2007, but the result of the patent came after almost a decade in 2015. Having already passed through the steps that analyze its safety, conducted with about 14,000 volunteers, the vaccine developed is in its third phase to verify its effectiveness. The director says that the research is already becoming a product and hopes that by 2020 it will be available to the population.
The success of the vaccine also comes from the fact that around R$ 300 million (around US$70 million) was invested by the public sector. The importance of this type of investment is highlighted by the Institute, since there are many patent registrations in Brazil that cannot evolve due to lack of financial resources.
*translated and adapted from Sao Paulo University webpage. The original publication can be found here

Brazilian PTO makes available digital collection of its official bulletin

In order to improve processes and procedures, the Brazilian PTO is making available more than one thousand editions of the Industrial Property Official Bulletin, including number one. The publications can be found on the BPTO’s official website.

Thus, the Institute increases the volume of technical information available and also facilitates the interaction with users.

This work has also a historical value, since the digital collection, composed mostly, of unique copies of the Bulletin filed at the Institute. In the first copy, dated April 4, 1972, for example, it is possible to observe the economic scenario of the time, the importance of technology transfer policy and the reasons for non-patenting of chemical, pharmaceutical and atomic nucleus.

*translated and adapted from the BPTO’s official web page. You can read the original publication (in Portuguese) here