19 May 2023
The acting president of the BPTO, Júlio César Moreira, presented last Tuesday, April 18th, at a breakfast promoted by ABPI (Intellectual Property Brazilian Association), the autarchy’s Strategic Plan for the next four years. At the meeting, the President announced, among others, actions for the areas of communication, governance, logistics, technology and infrastructure that, according to him, will allow the BPTO, by 2026, to decide in two years the examinations of patent applications, without any contestation. With that, the Brazilian Institute would be raised to the same level as the major international patent offices. “Yes, we have the capacity for this and we will do it”, said Moreira.
The presentation, mediated by the president of ABPI, Gabriel Leonardos, was also attended by the substitute Director of DIRPA (Patent Board), Alexandre Dantas Rodrigues, and the substitute Director of of DIRMA (Trademark Board), Schmuell Lopes Cantanhede. In his presentation, Moreira reaffirmed the need for BPTO management autonomy to hire examiners, buy equipment, invest in technology and other actions. To deal with these investments, he informed, the BPTO is asking the Ministry of Development, Industry, Commerce and Services to increase the autarchy’s budget for this year from the current R$ 52 million to R$ 72 million. “We want management autonomy and the possibility of programming for each year’s expenses”, he confirmed.
Moreira also announced the Institute’s intention to practice a pricing policy for the services provided, given that, he considered the last readjustment took place in 2014. On this point, one of the representatives pointed out that ABPI has always defended the financial autonomy of the autarchy and said: “The ABPI is not opposed to the differentiated pricing policy, but it only makes sense if this money can be invested by the BPTO in its activities”.
Despite the BPTO having reduced the backlog of patents, which are now stabilized at acceptable levels, informed Moreira, the Institute is concerned about the creation of a backlog in the area of trademarks, aggravated by the 100% growth of these applications in the last years and, at the same time, due to the decrease in the number of examiners. To alleviate the problem, the BPTO Strategic Plan foresees, by 2026, the admission of 60 new trademark examiners every semester.
Among the interesting points introduced in this Strategic Plan are the idea of accepting new modalities of non-traditional trademarks, such as sound and scent trademarks, and the possibility of continuously establishing interaction processes with interested parties.
Also regarding trademarks, the plan points out interesting targets to be implemented until 2026. According to the document, nowadays the average decision time for technical examination of free-trouble trademark applications, counted from the filing of the application, is 10 to 12 months. The proposal is to decide in 1-3 months. For cases with opposition, the average decision time, which today is 16 months, would be 7 months. Administrative nullity cases, which today, on average, are decided in 42 months, would be decided in 15 months.
Concerning the technological development plan of the Institute, directly related to the main activity developed, there are projects that involve the implementation and use of Artificial Intelligence solutions applied to search activities in the examination of IP applications, as well as the development of intelligent and simplified petition systems that increase the quality of trademark applications, to reduce the number of office actions, rejections, and oppositions, through the automation of nominative and figurative searches with AI in the filing form, and automated verification of the specification of goods and services.
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