Brazilian Trademark Office (BPTO)
The BPTO has been adopting measures aimed at maintaining the quality of the institute's activities without prejudice to users. The BRPTO has further extended the suspension of all deadlines until May 31, 2020, inclusive.
The end of the suspension, from 01/06/2020 will have two conditions in terms of counting deadlines:
- The deadlines in progress on the date of the issue of the Ordinance will continue to run again for any remaining period;
- Any deadlines that start during the period covered by the suspension (16/03 à 31/05) will be counted from 01/06 onwards.
Fonte INPI: https://www.gov.br/inpi/pt-br/servicos/covid-19-contagem-de-prazos/covid-19-contagem-de-prazos
The face-to-face service to users is suspended since March 16. Any questions should be directed to BPTO´s own customer service channel.
The procedures related to trademark and patent services are being carried out electronically, as usual, through the electronic protocol systems for ‘e-Marcas’ and ‘e-Patentes’, in force at the BPTO since 2006 and 2013, respectively.
Since our office already performed 100% of the patent and trademark services using the electronic means, there was no impact on the work routine of the patent and trademark departments and we are meeting all our client’s demands normally.
The examiners have been working since March 20, 2020 on a “home office” basis, using technology that the BPTO made available to all of its employees.
Through a press release, the institute informed that “the communication between the public and the BPTO will not suffer any interruption of continuity in this new and exceptional form of work and access. It is contingent and will remain for as long as public health authorities determine. The aim is to preserve the health of the community and employees”.
In addition to the measures mentioned above, the BPTO made available on its website a panel of indicators regarding its system availability and intermittency of its services, in real time. More specifically, the availability table informs the current status (available or unavailable) of the systems. Furthermore, it shows the percentage in which the systems remained available in the last 24 hours.
In this way, a user who needs, for example, electronic petitioning for a patent application, industrial design, geographical indication, computer program or integrated circuit topography, can quickly consult the data to check the integrity of the system at the exact moment of accessing it.
In addition, the intermittency table compares the current volume of protocols performed with the average of what was verified, in the same time range, in the last 60 days.
The situation is considered stable when, over the last four hours, the amount equals at least 50% of the historical average for the same period. When this percentage is not reached for four consecutive hours, the situation is considered unstable (yellow or red).
Another interesting measure adopted by the institute was the creation of the Observatory of Technologies related to COVID-19, which aims to disseminate technologies that may be useful for global and local actions, contributing to the solution of this problem and to the Brazilian innovation system and its players.
