Patents make progress, but the Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office (BPTO) still suffers with a bottleneck, says research

The evaluation of the Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office (BPTO), the government agency responsible for the registration of trademarks and patentes in Brazil, by businesspeople has improved in the last decade, in the wake of the technological evolution, but it is still far from ideal. Although they acknowledge the office’s recent effort to reduce the patent backlog, the time taken to analyse procedures continues to be the main bottleneck, in accordance with the American Chamber of Commerce for Brazil - Amcham Brasil’s research carried out by Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics (Ibope).

Last year, 43% of interviewees evaluated the BPTO’s service as excellent or good, compared to 22% in 2011. The majority (73%) hold that the BPTO Always or frequently discharges its functions. “The perception of the BPTO is consistently and gradually improving”, says Abrão Árabe Neto, Amcham’s executive vice president.

The portion that sees the government office’s service as bad decreased from 20% in 2011 to 8% in 2020. But the BPTO was still evaluated as regular by 45% of business people last year - in 2011, it was 52%. The fifth edition of Amcham’s research heard 109 executives from companies in different sectors, in addition to law firms, who on average have te n years’ relationship with the BPTO.

The agility of applications was the second most mentioned aspect among the greatest advances in the last four years - second only to the computerisation of services - but, at the same time, this was the most cited aspect among those that progressed least. “The general numbers in the survey have improved, they are good, but they are still below what we want”, says Cláudio Vilar Furtado, president of the BPTO.

He considers that, in the case of dissatisfaction with patents, the research was carried out halfway through the National Backlog Combatting Plan, which started in August 2019. This observation is echoed by the coordinator of Amcham’s intellectual property task force, Frank Fischer, partner at Dannemann Siemsen. “It caught the beginning of this perception. It is an ongoing process, but the outlook is positive, we are already at remarkable levels”, he says.

According to Furtado, by the end of 2020, the backlog of patent applications awaiting examination had halved - from around 150,000 in mid-2019 to just under 70,000.

The BPTO’s goal for 2021 is to resolve 80% of the backlog, but it could achieve 90%, says Furtado. “You don’t eradicate eight- or nine-years’ delay overnight. We have reduced the average decision time for the technical examination of patent applications to four years and we are on the road to two.”

Priority prosecution - for green patents, for example – already takes less than a year, according to him. This is also the case with applications through the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH), which prioritises the evaluation of patentes accepted at BPTO partner offices around the world. The Amcham research shows that 79% of businesspeople are aware of the PPH, but only 29% have used it.

That is why, among other reasons, the BPTO wants to work more proactivelly. For Furtado, many still have an “antiqued” view of the BPTO as a “large registry office”, but the organisation wants to work with innovation and research centres and companies. “Instead of waiting for them to come looking for us, we are going to them and guiding them. It is very important for Brazil, following the increase of this intangible asset in chains, to act”, says Furtado, citing China, India and South Korea as emerging champions in industrial property registrations, including in relation to covid-19.

For this, however, Furtado says that the BPTO needs to invest in qualified personnel and technology, such as artificial intelligence. “Our office needs to make this qualitative leap. I would also need to urgently bring in about 125 to 130 employees.” The government office suffered at the beginning of the pandemic: in May and June 2020, trademark filings fell 35%, when compared to the same period in 2019, according to Furtado. In July, the levels were already recovering, and the BPTO delivered a R$128 million surplus to the government. For 2021, it predicts R$ 157 million. One of the discussions is that part of this surplus is used in investments in the BPTO itself.