Brazil: to promote and increase patents

Today I bring you several news regarding patents in Brazil. In a recent post, INPI declares that Brazil “is the world's seventh largest economy and 13th largest producer of science, but only occupies the 26th position among the countries that applied for patents in the United States.” It appears then that the country has a strong scientific and technological production, but yet does not materialize works into patents.

Due to this situation INPI, seeking to incentive the public, had arranged a debate called "The law of patents and the future of innovation technology in Brazil" taking place last Thursday 27th October. [You can have more information of what happen in the debate here – from academic perspective to agricultural products]

On the same week INPI exchanged information with the Chinese counterparts holding meetings on the 21st [oops! that is not the same week] and 24th October [ok, this one is]. Representatives of the Regional Patent Offices of Shanghai and Guangdong, attended the meeting. INPI informs that the reunion focused on exchange of information including use of information technology in Brazil and China.

Now getting the dates right, the previous week INPI noted that ‘Innovation and intellectual property’ were to be entered on the agenda of the Brazilian academic. To this effect the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) Innovation Agency has signed a cooperation agreement with INPI -- the goal of the partnership, signed on October 21, 2011, is to further expand the use of IP in the university, which was the sixth largest patent applicant at the INPI between 2004-2008 with 141 applications, followed by Petrobras, Unicamp, USP, UFMG and Whirlpool.
The partnership will include awareness - raising seminars on the subject, training in intellectual property, and a course on intellectual property issues in graduate courses in Biotechnology conducted by UFRJ.

Justice denies extension of anti-cancer drug patent [does this one promotes?]
INPI notified that it has another victory against a pharmaceutical. On October 26, 2011, the Federal Court of the 2nd Region (TRF-2) denied unanimously the appeal that sought to extend the validity of the patent medicine called ‘capecitabine’, used to treat cancer of the colon, rectum, breast, stomach, pancreas and gullet. The appellants hoped to increase the validity of the patent until December 2013, but the court agreed to keep the deadline set by INPI -- December 2012.