BPTO publishes report on patent appeals and nullities between 2012 and 2023

BPTO publishes report on patent appeals and nullities between 2012 and 2023

On July 12, the Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office (BPTO) released the fourth edition of its report on patent appeals and nullities, this time referring to the period from 2012 to 2023. The document presents data compiled on the basis of publications in the Industrial Property Journal (RPI) in order to provide an overview of the situation of patent cases at 2nd instance in administrative proceedings (patent applications rejected, appeals against rejection and grants challenged by means of administrative nullity requests – ANR), allowing an assessment to be made of whether the respective cases have been concluded, as well as the results of the decisions handed down.

Firstly, the document takes stock of the availability of technical examiners qualified to examine appeals by technical area (Table 1), showing that there are 32 examiners, a substantial increase on the 20 reported in the last edition.

Next, the report presents the percentages of rejection decisions that were appealed (% Appeal) and of grant decisions that were challenged (% Nullity) between the period surveyed. In this sense, it was possible to observe that in the last 5 years (2019-2023) the % of Appeals per year varied between 35% and 43% (2019: 35%; 2020: 38%; 2021: 42%; 2022: 43%; 2023: 41%). The % of Nullity varied between 0.5% and 1% per year over the same period (2019: 1%; 2020: 0.5%; 2021: 1%; 2022: 0.5%; 2023: 1%).

The report also shows the evolution of the number of technical appeals filed over the period of 2012-2023. The total number of appeals against rejection of patent applications filed between 2012 and 2023 was 17,122 (sum of the last row of Table 4 of the report). In 2023, 1,932 appeals were filed, a slight decrease from the 2,142 appeals filed in 2022. From another piece of data, it is also possible to see the general situation of pending technical appeals, i.e. those for which no action has yet been taken by the authority. Between 2012 and 2023, the BPTO had a total of 6,481 pending appeals (sum of line 6 in Table 5 of the report).

As for the status of administrative nullity proceedings (ANP), the total number of ANP’s filed during this period was 2,552 (sum of the last line in Table 27 of the report). Finally, the report indicates that of the total number of ANP’s submitted in the period analyzed (1,158 cases), 135 are still pending analysis, according to Table 28 of the report.

The report can be accessed via the link: Patentes – 2ª Instância – Relatório COREP/CGREC – INPI 2012-2023