30 July, 2025

Towards a new PTO in Argentina: Feasible improvements in Patents. Using AI

On July 7, 2025, the Government changed the AR PTO and granted faculties to simplify patent prosecutions. The Minister who devised and executed these changes is the same that proposes granting more pharmaceutical patents in AR.

The Argentine Government changed the PTO, with the goals of reducing operating expenses, focusing its functions on IP services, and laying the foundations for better patent protection.

These changes were implemented by the same Minister who proposes enhancing the granting of pharmaceutical patents, in accordance with the GATT TRIPS. Clearly, it would seem that a new—and hopeful—chapter in patents would be opening.

All of this is part of policies to reduce public spending, given that the PTO was one of the hundred or so agencies that were changed or dissolved.

In the case of the PTO, Decree 462/2025 was published on July 7, 2025, whose sections 53 to 58 deal with it.

Briefly, the new regulations remove all non-IP-specific tasks from the INPI. These non-IP-related tasks includes, for example, financial administration, personnel selection and management, legal advice, procurement of supplies, and software development, among the most significant.

Furthermore, it reduces the number of senior positions, such as the elimination of PTO vice president, deputy directors of Trademarks and Models, and the elimination of a Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner of Patents, which will be replaced by a Patent Chief.

Regarding Patent Law, it is worth read the new section 92, paragraph h) of the Patent Law, which states:

“Section 92.- The Patent and Trademark Office shall have the following functions:

…h) Regulate the procedure for patents and utility models, in all aspects that facilitate them, adapt requirements that become obsolete due to the implementation of new technologies, and simplify the registration process for the benefit of the applicant and society as a whole.”

This new paragraph has at least three encouraging points.

  • First, it simplifies the patent registration process for the benefit of the applicant.
  • Second, it implements new technologies, such as AI.
  • And the third is that the mentor and executor of this changes (Minister of the National Goverment) publicly spoke out against the Joint Patent Resolution. The Joint Patent Resolution limits the granting of pharmaceutical patents only to new molecules. In fact, the Minister proposed declare null and void the Joint Patent Resolution, as well as to allow Argentina to significantly expand the granting of pharmaceutical patents, among other fields of technology, and fulfill with GATT TRIPs standards.

It remains to be seen the practical effects of this new Decree.

Director of the Argentinean office. IP Agent – Lawyer.