Bill 8133/17 of the Senate has been prioritized to be analyzed by the Committees of Finance and Taxation, the Committee of Constitution and Justice, and the Committee of Citizenship, of the Chamber of Deputies, and determines that the revenues of the BPTO be reinvested by the entity itself, which operates in a surplus.
The BPTO’s financial autonomy, which is a longstanding banner of the Brazilian Intellectual Property Association (ABPI), has been approved by the Labor, Administration and Public Service Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, and is at the core of discussions on improving productivity in the institute. “The BPTO has been taking steps to improve its productivity, and they are more than welcome, but I believe that the entity’s financial autonomy is a final solution to equate the Brazilian institute to the most efficient international patent offices”, says ABPI’s president, Luiz Edgard Montaury Pimenta.
Ten years for a patent grant – The BPTO’s financial autonomy has as its main argument the delay in the granting of a patent in Brazil, which takes an average of 10 years, while in countries like Spain and the United States this period is of two years. The budgetary situation of the institute became tighter after the budget cut imposed by the Ministry of Economy.
The issue shall be discussed at ABPI’s XXXIX International Congress on Intellectual Property, to be held from August 25 to 27, especially in the plenary session “The BPTO today and tomorrow: governance plan for the next four years”. In addition to the usual projections and performance data, the BPTO will detail a restructuring plan that has been announced by its president, economist Cláudio Furtado.
One of the main measures of the plan refers to the patent backlog. The stock is of about 218 thousand applications currently pending examination by the BPTO, which Furtado ensures that will be eliminated within two years. Specifics are not yet known.
The plan also includes adjusting the BPTO to the requirements of the Madrid Protocol, recently approved by the Federal Senate, establishing 18 months as the maximum waiting period for the analysis of a trademark among the 97 countries that signed the agreement. Other measures are focused on improving processes linked to information technology. In June, for example, the BPTO had to paralyze the operations of its system in order to migrate its Data Center.
Losing in research and development – Users of the system complain about the delay in the examination of patents that, with a budget attached to the Federal Government, does not have the autonomy to invest in the improvement of its internal processes, thus creating bottlenecks in the processing of these exams. According to the BPTO, approximately R$ 400 million are contingent – resources that could be used to improve the structure of the institute. “The known sluggishness of patent application examinations in Brazil is unacceptable, for it leads to a scenery of uncertainty and legal insecurity, harms companies and blurs the business environment”, says Montaury Pimenta. “Because of this, many companies stop innovating and end up favoring ready-made products. With this, we lose in research and development”.
