On June 6, 2017, the Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office (BPTO) published Normative Instruction No. 02/2017, which establishes the automatic admissibility of PCT applications in Brazil.
According to such Normative Instruction, PCT applications that entered the Brazilian national phase between January 1, 2013 and December 31, 2016, and are pending admissibility examination, shall be automatically admitted to the national phase by the BPTO. Applications comprising sequence listing are excluded from this proceeding.
The formal analysis of documents related to priority claims and assignment of PCT rights, among others, will be performed before technical examination. In case of inconsistencies or lack of required documents, the BPTO will raise an office action requesting such correction, under the penalty of cancellation of the PCT national phase admissibility.
This new proceeding aims to solve part of the BPTO’s huge backlog, which currently stands at approximately 80,000 pending PCT national phase entry requests. The admissibility decisions will be published within the next 4 (four) months in the BPTO’s Official Gazette.
PCT applications that entered the Brazilian national phase after January 1, 2017 will undergo regular admissibility examination. The BPTO expects that, in 2018, the national phase entry publication will occur within 120 days.