(BRPTO’s gazette of April 12, 2021)
The BRPTO published on April 12, 2022, Ordinance #34/2022, which revokes Ordinance #21/2021, expanding the preliminary office action program to applications filed on or after January 1, 2018.
The “preliminary office action” was created in 2019 as one of the BRPTO measures to reduce the patent backlog and pendency times, but it was limited to applications filed before December 31, 2016. In 2021, the BRPTO expanded the program, to include applications filed between January 1, 2017, and December 31, 2017. Now, applications filed after January 1, 2018, and still pending examination are also eligible to receive a preliminary office action.
BRPTO’s preliminary office action programs results so far
107,539 applications (all filed before December 21, 2016) have already received the preliminary OA created in 2019. An independent survey and data analysis by our data collection team shows the impact of the program on these duly filed, regularly pending applications before the BRPTO:
The visual aid bellow summarizes the status of the 9.479 applications (all filed between January 1, 2017 and December 31, 2017) that have already received the preliminary OA, under the 2021 preliminary office action program:
Currently, there are 31,671 pending applications filed on or after January 1, 2018, that are eligible for this new phase of the preliminary office action program.
Click here for more statistics about the Brazilian patent system.
Ordinance #34/2022 came into force on April 12, 2022, and its Portuguese version is available here.
Please contact us for the English version. We will be glad to assist you with more information on this matter at patents@lickslegal.com.