The Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office (BRPTO) announced this Tuesday, June 30, that it will admit requests for priority processing of patent applications classified under IPC - H04. This measure was formalized through DIRPA’s Ordinance #5/2026 published in the BRPTO's Official Gazette #2,895.
Only one request per applicant per calendar month will be admitted. This includes all forms of priority procedure for IPC - H04 patent applications.
Exceptionally, a second request from the same applicant will be admitted in July and, in the case of the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH), applications will be accepted for which the BRPTO has already issued an office action with publication code 6.23.
From a practical standpoint, the new regulation represents a minor change, from total blockage to a model that allows only a single request per applicant, which does little to alleviate the tension resulting from the lack of access to accelerated processing, a significant issue for innovation-intensive sectors such as telecommunications and information technologies.
The ordinance establishes the following exceptions to any limit: elderly applicants, applicants with disabilities, applicants suffering from serious illness, and applicants that are startups. The general limit of 3,200 PPH requests per year will remain in effect for 2026.
Ordinance #5/2026 is available in Portuguese here.
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