Adoption of Madrid Protocol recommended

Approving a decision of the Brazilian Inter-ministerial Group of Intellectual Property (GIPI), the Brazilian Chamber of Foreign Trade – CAMEX – has recommended the adoption of the Madrid Protocol at a meeting held on November 22 2006. The decision will now be sent to the Ministry of Casa Civil (which is a government department that assists the President of Brazil) where a bill will be prepared and submitted to the Brazilian Congress.

CAMEX is part of the Federal Government Council and is controlled by the Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade. The GIPI is an inter-ministerial group created under CAMEX with the task of suggesting actions which reconcile the interests of both internal and external governmental policies in terms of foreign trade of goods and services which relate to IP rights.

According to new reports issued by CAMEX, the effective adoption of the Madrid Protocol is unlikely to occur until 2008 when it expects the Brazilian Industrial Property Office to have dealt with the current backlog of approximately 500,000 pending applications. Only then will it be prepared to meet the examination period of 18 months required by the Madrid Protocol.