Gary Lineker used to say that football was a simple game -22 men chasing a ball for 90 minutes and, at the end, the Germans always win.

Nowadays, it seems obvious that the international political scenario follows a similar pattern: the EU is a simple game -27 countries chasing a common goal for 25 years and, at the end, the Brits always win.

According to the latest monthly Industrial Property Bulletin issued by the BRPTO, in the first 10 months of 2018 the number of patent applications awaiting a decision in the examination queue does not stop falling. This trend can be confirmed when we compare the numbers of October 2017 (227,498 pending patent applications) and October 2018 (209,671 pending patent applications). The same trend is observed for the pending applications of industrial designs – in the same period, the number fell from 10,044 to less than half: 3,482.

Please be informed that the BRPTO published on October 30, 2018, the Resolution No. 227/2018 establishing that the result of the searches carried out in Patent Offices of other countries, International or Regional Organizations could be used in Brazil to speed up examination of the pending patent application.

This procedure has been adopted by the BRPTO since first half of this year. In this sense, the BRPTO issues an Office Action published in the Official Gazette as Decision 6.20. 

The Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) pilot programme between the National Institute of Industrial property of Chile (INAPI) and the USPTO allows to speed up the patent prosecution of one or several corresponding claims that count with a positive ruling by the other Office, acting as a national Office, as an International Searching Authority (ISA) or an International Preliminary Examining Authority.