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>[14.Mar.11]
Patents – Brazil - US agreement contributes
to accelerate patent analysis
Source: INPI/BR [Adapted]
Brazil should sign, this
month, an agreement with the Unites States to integrate
the Patent Prosecution Highway Program (PPH). The objective
is to avoid double work and contribute to accelerate
patent analysis. However, it should be noted that Brazil
shall maintain its autonomy in deciding whether to grant
or not the patents since the legislations are quite
different.
Together with the PPH, other measures
shall speed up patent analysis, such as the hiring of
examiners, increase in productivity, internal procedures
revision and joint actions with other countries, including
in South America. Nowadays, a patent takes an average
of 8.3 years to grant and the goal is to have this number
reduced to half by 2015.
The PPH greatest advantage is that a
country’s examiner (Brazil, for instance) will
have access to the international search conducted by
an examiner from another nation (like the US), which
shall aid in its work, which will be expedited. All
examiners should conduct the same search, since a patent
can only be granted if nothing similar is found anywhere
else. An application shall only be analyzed by the PPH
if the applicant so requests.
By accelerating the
analysis of these applications, the tendency is for
other requests to also gain agility since the backlog
of patents waiting for analysis should decrease. Along
with other measures adopted by the INPI, this system
will contribute for reducing the average granting time
for all patent applications in Brazil.
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