Brazilian PTO Continues its efforts to Improve Performance Output
By Maria Belen Priore, Patents Department
We hereby inform the last news published by the Brazilian INPI’s official gazette in the past two weeks.
We would like to highlight two new rules, in where we found special interest that may benefit our clients.
The Official Gazette number 2515 launched a Resolution under number 236/19 that establishes the beginning of phase IV of the pilot project to accelerate examination for small and medium-sized Brazilian companies.
Official Gazette number 2516 publishes a normative instruction that aims to improve the Brazilian INPI’s performance, regarding the appeals submitted against rejections of trademarks and industrial designs, which are still pending of resolution, due to the backlog suffered.
The INPI launched this new normative instruction under number 101/19 which encourages the sectors that are responsible, to solve 31.000 pending resolutions in a year’s time.
This normative instruction establishes new transitory rules, including the issuance of a decree that will be dictated by the sectors DIRMA (Trademarks, Industrial Designs and Geographical Indications Direction) and CGREC (General Coordinator of Appeals and Administrative Proceedings of nullity). This decree will determine criteria to be applied in order to comply with this instruction, and shall be issued as soon as …
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New Manual for Brazilian Industrial Designs
By Maria Belen Priore, Patent Dept.
On January 8th, the Brazilian PTO launched the first edition of the Manual of Industrial Designs to ensure greater quality, transparency and uniformity in the field of examinations of industrial designs, the principles of legality, impartiality, morality, publicity and efficiency, within others.
This new Manual not only consolidates the guidelines and procedures related to the examination of industrial design applications, but also provides instructions for the filing of design applications and following-up on processes, helping examiners, prosecutors and users in general.
This first edition of the Manual of Industrial Designs became official by Resolution No. 232/2019 dated January 7, 2019, and was published in the PTO´s Official Gazette Nº 2505, Section I – Press Releases, and will be in force as of 03/09/2019. The aforementioned resolution also revokes normative instructions No. 44/2015, 80/2017 and articles 2nd, 3rd and the sole paragraph of resolution No. 159/2016.
This manual gathers everything concerning the Industrial Designs, being easy to access (published on the Brazilian PTO website), with no more than 135 pages (currently, because will be subject to periodic updates in charge of the Standing Committee for the Improvement of Procedures and …
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Free Trade Agreement: Implications for patents and designs
By Marta Garcia
The European Union (EU) and the four founding members of sub-regional trade bloc Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay) have been negotiating a free trade agreement (FTA) for the last 17 years as part of a broader Association Agreement between the two regions.
After a pause in the EU-Mercosur negotiations in 2012, these were re-launched in May 2016. Since then, there have been several rounds of negotiations, with the pace picking up in recent months.
The current EU proposal for the FTA comprises a chapter on intellectual property rights (IPR) covering standards concerning copyright, trademarks, designs, geographical indications, patents and plant varieties, as well as a section regarding IPR enforcement.
Regarding industrial designs, the EU proposal establishes in its Article 6.1 that the parties shall implement the Geneva Act to the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs (which establishes an international system – the Hague System – that allows industrial designs to be protected in multiple countries or regions with minimal formalities). Regarding the term of protection, under article 6.3 of the EU proposal, the duration of protection available shall amount to 25 years from the date of filing of the application. Additionally, …
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