Academic Work of Leão IP’s partner is quoted in historical judgement of patents In Brazil, ruled by the Supreme Court

By Leão Intellectual Property
01/10/2021

On this month of September, the Brazilian Supreme Court of Appeal’s (STF) judgement has been published, which ruled, for 9 votes against 2, the sole paragraph of Article 40 of the Brazilian Industrial Property Law 9279/96 (BIPL) as unconstitutional, by the understanding that the maximum term of validity of an invention patent (IP) is 20 years from the patent filing date, and for a utility model patent (UMP) is 15 years from the patent filing date. With that judgement, the majority of patents that have not been granted yet, will not have the sole paragraph (excised of the Law by the Brazilian Supreme Court of Appeal’s – STF) applied, restricting it to 20 or 15 years since the date of the application. But the patents that have already been granted with the extension of the validity in the field of products and pharmaceutical processes has their term reduced by the Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office – BPTO’s publication, as determined by the Supreme Court, as well as the ones which are related to equipment and/or materials and those which extensions of the validity were contested by lawsuits filed before 04.07.2021.

Our partner PhD Milton Lucídio Leão Barcellos has been studying, lecturing in Brazil and abroad, and publishing works about the patent term for years, and then we had the grateful surprise of seeing one of our partner’s works quoted by the vote of the Brazilian Supreme Court Judge Minister Rosa Weber (p. 19/20), as one of the basements for the recognition of the unconstitutionality of the sole paragraph of Article 40, BIPL. By the academic understood of our partner “by short synthesis, the premise adopted by the legislator derivative for the sole paragraph of Article 40 BIPL is vicious because it does not have a direct relation between the delay for the judgement of the patent application and real damages suffered by the applicant. Beyond the inexistence of an international paradigm with this generalist premise, it generates an uncertain period for validity of the patents, which jeopardizes the society as a whole, despite other aspects”, so that the decision is right according to the majority of STF by ruling unconstitutional the sole paragraph of Article 40 of BIPL.

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