The Science and Technology Commission (CCT) of the Brazilian Congress approved the shelving of a bill that limits the terms of medical patents to 20 years from the filing of the patent application to adapt Brazilian law to the agreement on aspects of related intellectual property rights TRIPS (TRIPS) of the World Trade Organization (WTO), of which Brazil is a signatory.
The rapporteur of the bill, Senator Rogério Carvalho, defended its shelving due to the subsequent approval of a new legislation that impairs the provisions of PLS 437 of 2018.
Senate Bill No. 437, 2018 (PLS 437/2018), seeks to amend Law No. 9,279, of May 14, 1996, which regulates rights and obligations related to industrial property, to regulate the prior approval of the National Sanitary Surveillance Agency (ANVISA) and to revoke the possibility of extending the validity of medical patents beyond the regular deadline counted from the filing date, and Law No. 9,782, of January 26, 1999, which establishes and regulates the National Health Surveillance System, creates the National Agency Sanitary Surveillance, and provides other measures, to provide the agency’s jurisdiction to examine patent applications for pharmaceutical products or processes.
However, three years later, Provisional Measure No. 1,040, of March 29, 2021, converted into Law No. 14,195 of 2021, whose scope is to improve the business environment in Brazil and, thus, revoked a series of legal devices to reduce red tape and simplify the functioning of the economy. Among these measures is the revocation of art. 229-C of the Industrial Property Law, Law No. 9,279, 1996, which established the obligation to grant patents for pharmaceutical products and processes depending on the prior consent of the National Health Surveillance Agency (ANVISA in portuguese). This revocation goes in the opposite direction of what bill PLS No. 437 of 2018 intended.
There was also the achievement of one of the goals of the bill, that is, the revocation of the sole paragraph of art. 40 of the Industrial Property Law, which established that the term of the patent, from its granting date, would not be less than ten years. It turns out that this amendment has already been promoted by Law No. 14,195 of 2021, and it is also worth remembering that the same provision of the Industrial Property Law was considered unconstitutional by the Federal Supreme Court (ADI No. 5529).
Now, the project goes to terminative deliberation in the Constitution, Justice and Citizenship Commission (CCJ in portuguese).
