More cooperation from the courts, harsher penalties for violators and coordinated actions by the authorities are some of the initiatives that can fight piracy and improve the business environment in Brazil, said L’Oréal Director of Institutional Relations, Patrick Sabatier, at an event at Casa do Saber, on December 2nd in Rio de Janeiro, on “Predictability and Legal Security of Intellectual Property in Brazil”. FinHealth’s President of Resources Management, João Paulo Poiares Baptista, and Judge Marcia Maria Nunes de Barros, from the 13th Federal Court of Rio de Janeiro, also participated in the debate, promoted by ABPI’s Business Committee coordinator, Jorge Ávila.
Damages with piracy include, among others, more than 2 million lost jobs, and R$ 10 billion of tax evasion, according to data from the Joint Parliamentary Front in Defense of Intellectual Property and Fight Against Piracy. The L’Oréal executive noted that the situation worsened with the crisis and the advent of artificial intelligence, adding that Brazil records 9.7 illegal downloads per inhabitant, one of the highest rates in the world. “The processes in Brazil are long and never-ending”, said Sabatier. He also cited lawsuits by L’Oréal itself, one of them pending court for 17.9 years and the other for 10.3 years.
Legal insecurity was exemplified by Poiares Baptista with the difficulty in approving FinHealth patents within regulatory entities. In one of them, the patent for medical equipment, already granted in Europe, is still pending at the Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office – BPTO. The executive also pointed out the difficulty of obtaining licenses for new drugs originating from Brazilian biodiversity at the Council of Management of Genetic Heritage – CEGEM. “The truth is, nobody knows how the council works”, he said.
In her presentation, Judge Márcia Maria Nunes de Barros (in the center in the photo) defended the elimination of subjectivity in the proceedings, contrasting with the guidelines of the regulatory entity, the BPTO, with the jurisprudence and the good reasoning of the judges. “Fortunately, all judicial offices already have their Intelligence Centers, which monitor repetitive management and precedents”, she said, defending the increase in specialized intellectual property courts. In the debate, ABPI’s president Luiz Edgard Montaury Pimenta clarified that the entity is working with the courts of Rio de Janeiro to create civil courts specialized in Intellectual Property.
