The weeks have been busy at the Brazilian Intellectual Property Office (INPI).
After some
news about patent guidelines, INPI published on the April 7th
Official Gazette (RPI 2309) the Resolution # 146/2015 (Resolução
nº 146/2015), instituting the electronic system for industrial designs.
According to the resolution, the electronic filing for industrial design
applications will become available on April 22, 2015.
INPI has progressively been improving their electronic systems. In
2006, INPI started with the “e-Trademarks” (e-Marcas) for trademark
applications, with an update to its 2.0 version in 2011. As reported here,
from July 2011 INPI started testing its “e-Patent “(e-Patentes) system by
allowing users to access “Cartas Patentes” (patent letters). Although scheduled
for 2012, it was in 2013 that INPI put up in the air the e-Patent system
officially. In October 2014, INPI started facilitating
access to online search system of trade marks, patents, industrial designs,
and computer programs. The industrial design system is the latest step taken by
the INPI towards a total digital environment.
INPI
electronic systems are part of INPI’s efforts to expedite patent and trademark
prosecution in order
to reduce its backlog. These systems allow users to file applications
electronically and have some online access to prior art documents and technical
opinions issued by examiners, among other services provided by the Office.
INPI’s
website provides quite some interesting data about the current use of the “e-Trademarks”
and “e-Patent”.
As per the tables, you can see that there is a growing interest in the use of
the systems, culminating in 74% of the trademark and patent applications being
currently filed electronically.
It is important to remember, however, that
in Brazilian Law industrial design applications are not subjected to
substantive examination. Therefore, it is really possible to expect an
immediate impact of the new system. Currently, INPI takes an average one and a
half year for granting industrial designs, but with the new system we can hope
the INPI will be able to significantly decrease the existing industrial design
backlog.
Post written by Roberto
Carapeto
