BRAZIL Law and Practice Contributed by: Gabriel F Leonardos, Claudio Barbosa and Viviane de Medeiros Trojan, Kasznar Leonardos Intellectual Property
1. Intellectual Property Rights and Granting Procedure 1.1 Types of Intellectual Property Rights In Brazil, invention rights are protected through patents for new technologies and utility mod- els for new shapes or arrangements in practical objects. These rights, along with other IP assets, are guaranteed by the Federal Constitution and governed by the Brazilian Industrial Property Law (Law No 9,279/96 – LPI), in line with inter- national treaties. Invention Patents A product or a process can be patentable as a patent for invention if (Article 8, LPI): • it meets the requirements of novelty and inventive step; and • it is susceptible to industrial application. An invention patent has a protection term of 20 years from the date of filing. Utility Models An object of practical use, or a part of such an object, will be patentable as a utility model if: • it is susceptible to industrial application; • it presents a new shape or arrangement; and • it involves an inventive act resulting in a func- tional improvement in its use or manufacture. A utility model has a protection term of 15 years from the date of filing. Ineligible Patent Subject Matter Articles 10 and 18 of the LPI determine that the following shall not be patentable as invention or utility model:
• discoveries, scientific theories and mathemat- ical methods; • purely abstract concepts; • schemes, plans, principles or methods of a commercial, accounting, financial, education- al or advertising nature; • literary, architectural, artistic and scientific works or any aesthetic creation; • techniques and methods for operations or surgery or therapeutic or diagnostic methods, for use on the human or animal body; • all or part of natural living beings and bio- logical materials found in nature, or isolated therefrom, including the genome or germ plasm of any natural living being and the natural biological process; • anything contrary to morality, decency or public safety, order and public health; • substances, materials, compounds, elements or products of any kind, including the modi- fication of their respective physical-chemical properties and the respective processes for obtaining or modifying them, when they result from the transformation of the atomic nucleus; and • living beings, whole or in part, except for • computer programs per se; • presentations of information; • rules for games; transgenic micro-organisms meeting the three requirements of patentability – novelty, inven- tive step and industrial application – provided for in Article 8 and which are not mere discov- eries. For the purposes of the LPI, transgenic micro- organisms are organisms, except for plants or animals, whole or part, that due to direct human intervention in their genetic composi- tion, express a characteristic that cannot be normally achieved by the species under natural conditions.
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