Earlier this week, the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) of Brazil launched a pilot program to accelerate green patent applications (see the Folha news piece here).
The goal of the program is to reduce the period of examination of patent applications related to green technologies to less than two years. Average prosecution time is five years and four months.
The pilot program will be limited to domestic filings (resident or non-residents) and limited to the first 500 petitions granted.
Eligible green technologies (with final determination for entry into the program being governed by a technical committee of INPI) fall under the following categories: alternative energy, transportation, energy conservation, waste management and agriculture.
The requirements to participate in the pilot program are:
The application is a utility patent application;
The application is a national application (resident or non-resident);
The application was filed with INPI on or after January 2, 2011; and
The application contains a maximum of 15 claims in total, with up to three independent claims.
Requests to enter the pilot program also require submission of a form specific to the pilot program and a request for examination (if not already requested) and early publication.
More information (in Portuguese) can be found on the INPI web site here.
Brazil’s INPI joins several other national intellectual property offices that offer expedited examination for green technologies, including the UK Intellectual Property Office, the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the Japanese Patent Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, the Israel Patent Office, and IP Australia.
Article by Marcelo König Sarkis, P. Eng., FIPIC, who is a Senior Patent Agent and Professional Engineer with Heenan Blaikie LLP. He is a member of Heenan Blaikie’s Intellectual Property as well as Climate, Cleantech and Sustainability Groups.
Article appearing courtesy Green Patent Blog.
