18 January 2023
By means of Ordinance 78/2022, the Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office (BPTO) published phase IV of the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) with a new deadline for requesting the priority procedure from January 1, 2023 to December 31, 2025.
This new phase of the PPH follows the same criteria previously established in phase III, with the difference of an increase in the limit to 250 applications for patent classified in the same Section of the International Patent Classification.
Recalling some requirements, the same applicant or owner may apply for only 1 PPH per week. The result from IPRP is still accepted as a basis for PPH requirements, limited to 100 requirements of PCT-PPH per year. Phase IV is also restricted to 800 PPH requirements per annual cycle.
The patent application must belong to a patent family wherein a Patent Office that has a PPH agreement with the BPTO has issued either a granting or allowance decision OR an International Preliminary Report on Patentability (IPRP) indicating patentable subject matter in the application.
The possibility of claiming matter remains equal to or more restricted than that considered patentable by the Office of Previous Examination, with the prohibition of inclusion of matter for which the Office of Previous Examination has not carried out a search and/or technical examination, even if it is to restrict the object of the claim.
We also remind that there cannot be, voluntarily, division or modification of the patent application between the PPH application and the priority procedure decision; in the case of division of the application before the PPH request, both the original application and its divisionals must have the examination duly requested.
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