On October 4, 2017 the Brazilian PTO (INPI) and EPO signed the PPH agreement. The organizations were represented by Luiz Otávio Pimentel, the President of Brazil's National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) and EPO President Benoît Battistelli.
The agreement provides for collaboration through a pilot program of Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH), which is one of the most widely used in the world for cooperation between patent offices. For this model of partnership between two countries/regions, the patent applicant may request that the examination of his application be expedited in one of the offices, after having been granted by the other.
Under the PPH pilot, which will initially run for two years, applicants whose claims have been found to be patentable by either the EPO or INPI may ask for accelerated processing of their corresponding applications that are pending before the other office. Further details regarding the program will be made available via the Offices' website closer to the implementation date foreseen for the beginning of 2018.
This is possible because the patent, to be granted, must be new all over the world and therefore this step of the exam is similar in every office. When considering the analysis of another country to make its decision, the examiner will have substantial time reduction in his analysis work.
In this cooperation between the INPI and the EPO, up to 300 patent applications per year may be included in the areas of Medical Technology and Chemistry (except drugs).
We will keep you updated on the further developments.
Source: https://www.epo.org
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