INCOBRA - Increasing International Science, Technology and Innovation Cooperation between Brazil and the European Union

The Brazilian Ministry of Industry, Foreign Trade and Services (MDIC) and the European Patent Office (EPO) signed a joint statement on Monday in Weimar, Germany, seeking greater agility and quality in patent examination. The goal is to reduce bureaucracy and queuing in requests analysis - called a backlog - and make Brazilian and European innovation market faster.

The document opens the Patent Prosecution Agreement (PPH) between the National Intellectual Property Institute (INPI) and the EPO, which represents 38 patent offices in Europe, including European Members States and other associated governments such as Turkey, Norway and Iceland. The pilot agreement should be signed in three months.

EPO Vice-President, Raimund Lutz, said the institution has a long tradition of partnership with INPI and that "the joint statement will boost cooperation and shorten analysis times." In Brazil, the PPH should benefit companies that had their patents granted abroad, but are still awaiting examination in the country.

In addition, the productive sector evaluates that the agreement will attract technologies with the reduction in the waiting time for examination. Currently, a patent request takes an average of 11 years to be analyzed in Brazil. The average of EPO is five years. In 2015, the European entity received 278,867 applications. Out of these, 604 were Brazilian requests.

"Brazil needs to attract investment and add value to its industrial production, especially in high technology areas, and one way to promote these activities is to speed up the examination and granting of patents. The signing of this agreement with the Europeans is an important step to deepen our relationship with our main partner, which is the European Union" said the president of the National Industry Confederation (CNI), Robson Braga.

The project follows the lines of other cooperation initiatives, such as the partnership with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), already in force, and the Japanese Patent Office (JPO), whose agreement to set up a working group was signed early in October, 2016.

These initiatives will allow Brazilians to use the results of the INPI exam to accelerate the analysis in the signatory countries of such agreements (in the United States today, and in the future in Japan and Europe). The aim is to open the pilot project for sectors to be defined between the parties (with the United States, for example, the PPH focuses on the oil and gas sectors), based on the flow of requests and the most interested areas.

With these prioritization programs, the MDIC expects that INPI will be able to respond more quickly to depositors seeking answers to their patent applications, in order to guarantee legal certainty and facilitate the export of Brazilian technologies. In Brazil, the INPI examiner will continue to be responsible for the final decision on the patent request.

"These initiatives are aligned with our proposal for constant improvement of the business environment in Brazil, in order to guarantee security and predictability in the treatment of industrial property, thus fostering systemic innovation," said the Minister of Industry, Foreign Trade and Services, Marcos Pereira, during the signing ceremony.

(CT & I Management Agency, with information from MDIC and CNI Agency News)