INPI Brazil

Collaboration Between Brazilian PTO and CAS to Fight Patent Backlog with the Help of AI

By Marta García

On January 8, 2019, the Brazilian National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) and CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society that specializes in scientific information solutions, announced that they have initiated a collaboration to speed up the patent examination process at INPI through the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools.

CAS´s AI solution combines scoring similarity, workflow classification and knowledge-space exploration capabilities to provide patent examiners with a comprehensive set of prior art in the relevant field of technology, as well as information already published that may be relevant to the examination, helping to expedite the examination process.

“CAS´s technology can help INPI examiners quickly uncover relevant scientific information, a promising development for shortening the time of patent application processing,” said Luiz Otávio Pimentel, former President of INPI.

As recently reported in our blog, according to the INPI´s 2018 Activity Report, the average decision time for patent applications in Brazil is currently 10 years, with pharma and IT patent applications reaching a maximum average of 13 years.

Therefore, this collaboration with CAS is among the several measures that the INPI has been implementing since 2016 with the aim of tackling one of the biggest patent backlogs in the world. Such measures comprise a 25% increase in its professional staff, including the recruitment of more than 200 new examiners, the optimization of internal procedures, improvements in the electronic systems, as well as the launch of several Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) programs.

Source:

http://www.inpi.gov.br

https://www.cas.org

INPI Brazil – New Rule on Patent examination

By José Santacroce, Head of Patent Department

On 30 October 2018, the Brazilian National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) in order to reduce its current backlog published Rule 227/2018, regulating for the analysis of patents using the results of searches in other national or regional patent offices.

The Rule is applicable to patent applications which:

1. have not already been submitted to technical examination of the INPI;
2. have not applied to any other form of priority examination by the INPI;
3. have not received any pre-grant opposition;
4. have a counterpart application with prior art searches realized by national or regional patent offices in other countries.

Once the above conditions are fulfilled, the INPI will publish an opinion (under code 06.20) setting out prior art documents cited by foreign patent offices and inviting applicant to submit a new set of claims and/or arguments as to the patentability of the claimed invention. Thereafter, the applicant will have 60 days from the date of publication to answer such queries.

The new Rule is based on the findings of an existing pilot program introduced in January 2018, with the objective of evaluating the possible simplification and streamlining of technical procedures for examination of patent applications by using the work already done by other patent offices in the world. Such strategy is in line with the INPI Action Plan of 2018, which seeks to reduce the backlog of patents in the INPI (currently there are approximately 200,000 patent applications pending examination).

Source: INPI Brazil