THE PRIORITY PROCEDURE OF THE STARTUPS PATENT APPLICATION

by Aline Souza Peres
07/07/2021

In a society in constant transformation, which requires quick and effective solutions to new challenges that arise every day, the agile business model of startups stands out due to its ability to present quick and innovative responses to the market.

If, on the one hand, the innovative potential of startups is a competitive differential, on the other hand, the lack of strategic management of these assets, especially with regard to the protection via the patent system of those innovations that result in new or improved technologies, makes the adoption of measures unfeasible against competitors.

As provided for in the Industrial Property Law (9,279/96), the granting of a patent guarantees its holder the right to prevent third parties, without their consent, from exploring the product or process object of the patent during the term of protection, enhancing the strategic and competitive power of the company, as it guarantees the power to limit competition.

It happens that, for fear of the delay in the process of analyzing the patent application, many startups choose not to use this system to protect their creations, giving up a competitive advantage in the market.

In this sense, the Brazilian Institute of Industrial Property - INPI, in order to help technology-based companies to consolidate in the market and encourage them to make use of the patent system, established through BPTO Act N. 247/2020[1], the priority processing modality for patent applications filed by startups.

Thus, since 2020, startups can request that their applications have priority processing, drastically reducing the processing time of the patent application, just that, when requesting the service, such patent applicants present a copy of the issued certificate through the Redesim portal, within its validity period, indicating the name of the company Inova Simples, as well as fulfilling the prerequisites determined by art. 3 of Ordinance 247/2020.

This priority procedure is not exclusive to startups, and the legislation covers several different types of service application, among which are: individuals aged 60 years or over, micro-enterprises and/or small businesses, which process object is reproduced by third parties without permission; processes that claim the protection of green technology, among other provisions, competing in each case to comply with specific requirements.[2].

As a reference, the Brazilian Institute of Industrial Property provides an interactive panel with all statistical data[3], subsidies that demonstrate that in the first half of 2020, the average time between the application and the decision of the technical examination of a priority patent application was about 231 (two hundred and thirty-one) days, already analyzing the data available for the same period of the year 2021, we verified that the average time would be 79 (seventy-nine) days, demonstrating the speed of decisions on patent applications that use the priority procedure.

In this way, the innovative potential of startups, combined with a swift process for processing patent applications, through the priority process modality, guarantees the holder the necessary strategic differential in a highly competitive environment.

 

by Aline Souza Peres – Attorney at law, Coord. of the Litigation Dept. of Leão Intellectual Property

 

[1] INPI Ordinance No. 247 of June 22, 2020. Industrial Property Magazine No. 2582, published on June 30, 2020. Available at: http:// /revistas.inpi.gov.br/pdf/Comunicados2582.pdf – Accessed on 07/01/2021

[2] https://www.gov.br/inpi/pt-br/servicos/patentes/tramite-prioritario/modalidades-de-tramite-prioritario-de-patentes – Access in 01.07.2021

[3] https://www.gov.br/inpi/pt-br/servicos/patentes/tramite-prioritario/estatisticas-gerais – Access in 01.07.2021

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