On Tuesday, December 10, 2024, the Brazilian PTO published Ordinance/INPI/nº 48, which established the guidelines for Phase V of the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) Project. The new phase of the PPH Program will have substantial differences in relation to its previous phases.

The new cycle of requests to participate in the PPH Program, according to the new ordinance, will begin on January 1, 2025 and will present the following conditions:

• Up to 3,200 applications for participation may be received per annual cycle; and

• Up to 1,000 applications for participation may be made in the same Section of the International Patent Classification.

Among the changes introduced in the new ordinance, the addition of new patent offices to the list of partners stands out, since the Brazilian PTO has joined the Global Patent Prosecution Highway (GPPH). In addition, from now on, the Brazilian PTO will accept PPH requests for applications whose priority is not from a Partner Office of the PPH Program.

Another important update resulting from the new ordinance is the removal of the restriction of a single PPH request for patent applications of the same applicant within the weekly cycle. From now on, there will be no restriction on the number of cases that can be filed by the same applicant within a week.

The quantitative restriction on the number of applications that used the results of the PCT was also removed.

Finally, it should also be noted that, as in phase IV, the Brazilian PTO will not allow the submission of an appeal for any type of decision with regard to the request for the priority procedure.

It is possible to note that this new phase of the PPH project, in addition to increasing the number of cases to be accepted, further expands the possibilities of cases that can be privileged with the priority examination, which is a great opportunity for patent applicants in Brazil to achieve examination results more quickly.

In case you have interest in speeding up the examination of a patent application by the PPH program, please do not hesitate to contact us.