A BPTO 4.0, with remote management, digitalized processes, telecommuting, and more technical decisions is what will result from the reforms undertaken by the institute’s new management, which took over in early 2018. This information was given by Liane Lage, Director of Patents, Computer Programs and Topographies of Integrated Circuits, in a webinar organized by ABPI on April 29th. “In the post-backlog, we will have the BPTO in the palm of our hands”, Lage stated. “Wait, the news will be very good”.
Another good news is that, according to the BPTO’s director, it has been practically null “The impact of Covid-19 in the Program to Fight Against the Patent Backlog”, the theme of the Webinar, which had the participation of ABPI’s president, Luiz Edgard Montaury Pimenta, and was mediated by the coordinators of ABPI’s Patents Study Committee, Ana Cristina Müller, Ana Cláudia Mamede Carneiro and José Eduardo Filgueiras. In the area of patents, in the first four months of this year, 8.658 technical decisions were made, against 9.793 in 2019, while in 2020 the average decision time per technical division was reduced to 8.4 years.
According to Liane Lage, the telecommuting regime will not interfere with the BPTO’s goal of ending the patent backlog in 2021. The reduction in the stock of patents does not stop. In early August 2019, when the Program started, the institute’s “backlogometer” indicated 149.92 thousand patent applications pending examination. Nine months later, the number dropped to 112.09 thousand. In the last two months alone, in the middle of a pandemic, the patent backlog has been reduced by more than 5.000 applications.
