The digital revolution has already reached the courts and is changing the way of doing justice, attested the representatives of the Judiciary in the debate Five years of the CPC (Brazilian Civil Procedure Code) – a brief analysis in the light of IP”, which brought together Judge Henrique Figueira, President of the Rio de Janeiro State Court of Appeals (TJ-RJ), Federal Judge Marcelo Leonardo Tavares and lawyer Fernanda Pantoja, with the participation of lawyers José Mauro Decoussau Machado and Ricardo Nunes. “Several technological innovations have caused a revolution in society, with consequences in many areas, including the judiciary”, said Judge Figueira.
“We are living in a revolutionary period. This Civil Procedure Code, the CPC, of 2015 is already affected by the paradigm shift by the electronic process, by new forms of access to justice, as well as by the moment we are living in the pandemic”, said Judge Tavares,
Judge Figueira explained that the judiciary has been incorporating several technological innovations, such as the virtualization and digitization of processes within the scope of the Justice 4.0 project coordinated by the Brazilian National Council of Justice. According to him, starting from September, at the TJ-RJ, through the Digital Office application, it will be possible to file petitions, hearings, monitor processes, verify decisions, sentences, receive information and citations, or conduct case law research. “The idea is to create centers for business matters. With the expertise, we will improve the quality of our judgments”.
In his presentation, Judge Tavares considered that “there will be a future participation, not far from Artificial Intelligence in the face of a system that becomes more coherent in the shaping of precedents for uniformity of decisions and this will modify the jurisdictional provision in the medium term”. He referred to Article 1 of the CPC, which indicates the need for the institutes of the Brazilian civil procedure to find a basis in the Constitution. “This is capable of bringing about interpretation changes mainly through the filtering of the Constitution’s moral values”.
When analyzing the changes brought by the CPC in the Intellectual Property area, lawyer Fernanda Pantoja considered that “in some cases, it was a sharp shot even in the dark, in others it still hasn’t worked”, as no tests or studies were carried out for its implementation.
Fernanda emphasizes that the changes have not been put in place yet because they take time, many need a cultural shift, the introjection of new paradigms and, for that, five years is not enough”. According to her, this would explain why many innovations have not been disseminated in practice or are underused, such as procedural conventions, the partial judgment of merit, and evidence protection. “IP cases, specifically the violation of trade dress marks, for example, refer to very fertile matter for interim protection, especially for injunctive relief”.
Indispensable ABPI
During his participation in Panel 4, Federal Judge Marcelo Leonardo Tavares said that the creation, in 2001, of the four federal courts and 2005 of the two groups specialized in industrial property contributed to the training of judges in the matter. And in recognition of ABPI’s contribution to jurisdictional improvement, he quoted Brecht: “There are men that fight one day and are good, others fight one year and they’re better, and there are those who fight many years and are very good, but there are the ones who fight their whole lives, and those are the indispensable ones. That’s the role of ABPI in the fight of a lifetime for IP”.
