The new agreement opens the door for patent collaboration between EU and Brazil.
A memorandum of understanding was signed this week by the Brazilian Patent Office (BRPTO) and the European Patent Office (EPO), which will form the basis of a future Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) programme between the two institutes, reports André Venturini for Lexology.
Under the PPH, applicants for a patent that have received a positive ruling from one office will then be able to fast-track examination of corresponding applications in a second office. The aim of the system is to allow patent offices to benefit from work done by their counterparts elsewhere in the world.
Brazil already has PPH agreements in place with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and the Japan Patent Office.
Currently, the BRPTO anticipates this latest programme to be a pilot programme with applications limited to 300 per year, and initially only those related to medical devices and general chemistry.