2017 was excellent for the country’s industry, at least in terms of innovation. The granting of patents reached its highest mark in the last 16 years. From January 1st to December 31st, the INPI (National Institute of Industrial Property) accepted 6,250 patents. It is not a historical record, but it is the best branding since the year 2000, when 6,695 orders were fulfilled in Brazil. The survey was produced and disseminated by the CNI (National Confederation of Industry).
The result for 2017 was 30.9% higher than the previous year. And the reason is not the inventiveness of scientists, researchers and industrialists. The biggest cause of the increase in the granting of patents is an internal restructuring carried out at the INPI, which was already expected – with anxiety – by the market for a long time. More than 200 servers were hired to finally speed up the work and they succeeded: the number of decisions increased by 17%.
If you don’t know, the World Intellectual Property Organization considers Brazil the champion of delay in granting patents. It’s not a title to be proud of. Around here, requests take, on average, eight years to be analyzed and, finally, accepted or refused. We are below nations like India, Czech Republic and Vietnam. Also, we are very behind the Usain Bolt of granting patents, Japan, which takes only 15 months to respond to inventors.
PATENTS DENIED
Despite being the largest number in the granting of patents in 16 years, the 6,250 applications accepted represent only 13.9% of the 44,781 decisions made by the INPI. In other words, most of the inventions were not recognized by the institute.
In 2018, the queue to be seen and receive a YES or NO remains very long. In fact, gigantic. There are 225,000 processes awaiting analysis. An idea by the INPI to speed up the decision will be tested next year. Applications for granting patents to medium and small companies will have priority and will jump to the front of that queue.
PATENT DEPOSIT
Iplatam has experts who can help you in this process. Check out our special patent filing page. There you will be able to discover answers to common questions, such as the steps to grant, all the costs involved, and the validity of this right around the world. And if you have any doubts, you already know: you can contact us at any time!
