Region: Latin America & Caribbean

Senate Bill 437/2018, which seeks to amend the Brazilian Industrial Property Law, is being processed by the National Congress. It proposes to eliminate any doubts about the applicable term of validity and means that rights holders will no longer be able to enjoy patent exclusivity for more than 20 years.

30 October 2019

Motivated by the increasing demand for patients who use cannabis for therapeutic purposes and the need to import the product, the Brazilian Health Surveillance Agency has launched two public consultation proposals, which aim to create clear and transparent rules on technical requirements for cannabis-based drugs.

23 October 2019

A report by the UK IP Office finds more women named on patents than ever before – but also that they remain woefully under-represented. We present the top takeaways from a very timely study

11 October 2019

The National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) has released a report entitled “Use of Industrial Property System by Start-ups”, which combines data provided by the Brazilian Association of Start-ups with information in the INPI and Federal Revenue databases to analyse the use of industrial and intellectual property by start-ups in Brazil. The report found a relatively low number of IP mechanisms in use but determined that the most popular field among start-ups is IT services.

09 October 2019

Featured in IAM Yearbook: Building IP value in the 21st century 2020

03 October 2019

The Code of Civil Procedure establishes a mechanism for the early production of evidence, enabling its use as a crucial instrument for prior assessment in patent infringement scenarios, in which technical evidence can play a decisive role.

02 October 2019

The recent trade accord agreed in principle between the EU and Mercosur promises to deliver significant benefits, but political controversies around issues such as data protection and SPCs mean that the deal is not yet sealed

30 September 2019

The National Institute of Industrial Property has released a new study, which assessed patent applications in the biotech sector filed by national applicants between 2010 and 2016. It aims to verify the demand for a Brazilian institution that serves as a depository for biological material under the Budapest Treaty on the International Recognition of the Deposit of Microorganisms for the Purposes of Patent Procedure.

25 September 2019

In the last decade, a tremendous patent backlog has accumulated at the National Institute of Industrial Property, which has made the patent application system less appealing. However, the Patent Backlog Combat Plan launched in July aims to reduce the patent backlog by 80% by 2021 and decrease the time to reach a final decision to two years from the examination request.

11 September 2019

While injunctions are valuable instruments their availability varies widely around the world. In the first of a three-part analysis of the global landscape we focus on the three most populous countries in the Americas: the US, Mexico and Brazil

04 September 2019