New Ordinance published by the INPI institutes relevant changes regarding the preliminary requirements

The new ordinance establishes changes in the provisions of the preliminary requirement for patent applications that are pending technical exam.

On April 12, 2022, the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) published Ordinance INPI/PR nº 34/2022, which establishes changes in the provisions of the preliminary requirement (Office Action 6.23) for patent applications that are pending technical exam.

The first modification refers to patent applications for inventions targeted by the ordinance, which are those filed from 2017 onwards. Therefore, from now on, any patent application that has a filing date from January 1, 2017 is subject to eligible to receive the preliminary requirement (OA 6.23), provided they have searches available at patent offices in other jurisdictions for their corresponding applications from the same family.

The Applicant must comply with the preliminary requirement (OA 6.23), expressing its opinion on the documents presented in the search report and promoting the appropriate amendments in the set of claims.

It should be noted that there was no change in the period for the Applicant’s manifestation regarding the requirement in question, which remained for 90 days from the date of publication of the same on the Brazilian Official Gazette.

The second modification concerns the prosecution of the technical examination. For requests that have undergone OA 6.23, lack of amendments or substantial arguments that meet patentability requirements over the cited prior art, will lead to a direct refusal, with the only option of an appeal.

Engineer. Telecommunications Engineer.