The Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office (BPTO) published in Official Bulletin no. 2,816, of December 24, 2024, Ordinance no. 23, which establishes additional provisions for Phase V of the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) program in 2025.
Ordinance no. 23 defines a limit of 800 PPH requests per trimester, regardless of their acceptance. Said limit will be reset on the first day of each trimester, until the previously announced limit of 3,200 annual PPH requests is reached.
Furthermore, the BPTO will not accept any PPH requests for patent applications classified as H04 in the International Patent Classification (IPC) during the first trimester of 2025. This restriction will be reevaluated every trimester and it is due to the currently pending amount of PPH requests in this IPC.
It should be highlighted that in case of inadmissibility of fast-track prosecution based on the limits imposed by this Ordinance, the patent application will have a regular prosecution, and any amendments submitted together with the PPH request will not be considered. On the other hand, it is possible to request a refund of the fees collected for the fast-track prosecution request not admitted based on this Ordinance and submit a new PPH request.
The statistics related to the PPH requests will be published every week on the BPTO’s website.
Ordinance no. 23 comes into force on January 1st, 2025.
