During last week 19-22 October 2020, the Brazilian Instituto Nacional da Propriedade Industrial (INPI) celebrated the YEAR AWARD run by the Brazilian Intellectual Property Association (ABPI). The later was celebrating the 40th ABPI International Intellectual Property Congress.
This year, the award was aiming to reward the best patent in the area of COVID-19 looking for the following criteria: generating both social and potentially economic benefits; environmental impact; international protection and, the participation of nationals in developing the invention.
Twelve made it to the shortlist. The judging committee
composed of three professors from the INPI's Postgraduate and Research Division
granted the award to PI0903266-5 ‘Method and probe to aspirate endobronchial
secretion’, belonging to the Federal University of Minas Gerais.
In the same line, in September, the INPI did a study to framework patents and
industrial design in the field of ‘mask and respirators’. The goal was to
provide information to various actors and thus, the data obtained covered: recent decades and, national and foreign applications. A summary of the data can
be obtained here (in Portuguese) and for the full study here (in Portuguese). The
nutshell of this info is that the increase in this field was noticed in 2020
and that in general there were more industrial design applications that patents
– most applications came from The United States, and nationally, from the state
of São Paulo.
