The Brazilian PTO (BRPTO) issues Normative Instruction #02/2017 on the automatic admissibility of PCT national phase applications

(BRPTO’s IP gazette of June 6 th , 2017)The BRPTO published today, June 6, 2017, Normative Instruction #02/2017 which establishes that PCT applications that entered the Brazilian national phase between January 1, 2013 and December 31, 2016, and which have not undergone admissibility examination yet, shall be automaticallyadmitted by the BRPTO.The automatic admissibility of PCT national phase applications aims at solving part of the BRPTO’s huge backlog, which currently stands at circa 80,000 applications pending admissibility examination. The admissibility decisions will be published within the next 4 (four) months in the BRPTO’s IP Gazette.According to the sole paragraph of art. 3 of Normative Instruction #02/2017, applications comprising sequence listings and applications for which the admissibility examination has already been initiated, shall not benefit from the provisions of this Normative Instruction.The Normative Instruction #02/2017 establishes in art. 5 that the analysis of the documents related to the priority claim and assignment of PCT rights, among other related documents, will be performed in a phase preceding the substantive examination of the application. If the BRPTO findsinconsistencies in the documents submitted by the applicant or even the absence of any required documents, the applicant shall be entitled to correct the application upon the BRPTO request.If the applicant fails to comply with the BRPTO request at such stage, the PCT national phaseadmissibility will be annulled by the BRPTO.Applications that entered the Brazilian national phase from January 1, 2017 and on, will undergo regular admissibility examination. The BRPTO expects that the admissibility examination will be performed within 120 days in 2018.Normative Instruction #02/2017 shall be effective as of June 12, 2017.The original Portuguese version of Normative Instruction #02/2017 is available here and the English translation can be downloaded here. For more information, please contact info@lickslegal.com