Brazil’s National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) has placed examination efficiency at the centre of its 2026 action plan, with artificial intelligence tools expected to support searches, classification and substantive review for trademarks and industrial designs. For applicants, this should not be read as a simple IT update. If the new tools are matched with reliable data, examiner oversight and clear operating criteria, Brazil’s long examination timelines could begin to move in a more predictable direction.The plan also points to stronger regional protection for geographical...
Brazil’s National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) is extending the policy logic of its Green Patent fast-track programme into trade marks, with accelerated examination expected for applications covering goods or services linked to sustainable agriculture, clean energy and environmental recycling. For companies using brands to identify green technologies, circular-economy services or low-carbon product lines, the trade mark filing process may now carry a clearer industrial-policy dimension.The same package also responds to a long-standing problem in Brazil: trade mark squatting. A...
Brazil’s National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) is opening the second phase of its trademark fast-track programme from May 2026, with 3,000 places available across the year. For applicants that need a registration quickly for platform access, public funding, dispute handling or international portfolio coordination, the programme may become a practical timing tool rather than a procedural formality.The reform also changes how High Reputation Marks can be handled in Brazil. Under the rule effective from 1 May, an applicant may link registration numbers in several classes within a...
Brazil’s National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) has opened Phase II of its priority trademark examination programme, significantly widening the situations in which applicants may request faster handling. The new categories include Brazilian basic applications linked to Madrid System international registrations where INPI acts as the office of origin, applicants that need trademark registration to operate on online marketplaces, traditional communities and family farming applicants, applicants domiciled in countries with reciprocal arrangements with Brazil, and cases where...
Brazil’s INPI is continuing to streamline the handling path for international design filings that designate Brazil, with the interface between Hague System designations, local data intake and examination workflow becoming more efficient in practice. For applicants, the practical value is not just a shorter queue. It is a more predictable landing path in Brazil, especially when the filing strategy, titles and figure set are prepared carefully from the outset.The more interesting shift is in how GUI and dynamic icon filings are being expressed. What is clearer in the public guidance is that...
Brazil’s INPI is starting to make its industrial design acceleration policy more concrete. Under the latest arrangement, industrial design applications designating Brazil through the Hague System may file a free fast-track request online where the product design is clearly tied to environmental efficiency or accessibility-oriented assistive use. For qualifying cases, the target is a substantive review and decision within 30 days. For applicants already treating Brazil as a serious design market rather than a distant filing add-on, that is not a minor procedural perk. It can materially...
On 18 June 2026, Brazil’s National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) announced a fresh upgrade to its electronic industrial design examination system to align more closely with the latest digital standards of the Hague System. For applicants dealing with graphical user interfaces, holographic projections and moving designs, the practical shift is clear: Brazil is now prepared to receive a fuller digital record of what the design actually is.The headline change is that mainstream 3D modelling files and video demonstration clips can now form part of the evidentiary basis for...
Editor’s note (24 September 2026): as of publication we have not located an official announcement of the measures described below; this article is based on industry briefings and is subject to official confirmation.
On June 30, Brazil’s National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) released a new rule on the examination of trademark coexistence agreements and Letters of Consent. The practical shift is substantial: where the conflicting parties have signed a coexistence arrangement, examiners are now expected, as a rule, to accept that arrangement and allow registration, with tighter...
Brazil’s National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) announced on 24 July that DIRMA will hold a public stakeholder meeting on 19 August 2026, with in-person and online participation. One agenda item is the presentation and discussion of revised registrability criteria for position marks, following the close of the related public consultation on 24 July. The direction disclosed by INPI is to assess the sign, its clearly defined placement and the relevant public’s perception of that combination, rather than treating the position in isolation. The final approach should still be checked...
On 11 August 2026, Brazil’s INPI announced the launch of a collaborative patent examination project with Peru’s INDECOPI, beginning with nine applications. The first batch targets pharmaceuticals, including medicinal chemistry and biopharmaceuticals, biotechnology and natural products. Eligible cases were filed through the PCT route, have corresponding family applications in both Brazil and Peru, and entered the national phase within the project’s specified window. Selected applications move ahead of the ordinary examination queue, and the project does not use a preliminary technical office...
This article updates our report of 17 August, “Brazil and Peru Open Collaborative PCT Review for Life Sciences Patents”.
Brazil’s National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) and Peru’s INDECOPI have moved patent cooperation into a more operational phase. On 11 August 2026, Brazil’s INPI announced the launch of a collaborative examination project covering an initial group of nine applications in pharmaceuticals, medicinal chemistry and biopharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and natural products. The selected cases must be linked through the PCT route, have corresponding family applications...
Brazil’s National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) announced on August 25, 2026 that it had launched a collaborative patent examination project with Uruguay’s National Directorate of Industrial Property (DNPI). The first phase targets pharmaceuticals, including chemical and biological drugs, biotechnology and natural products. Eligible cases must have been filed through the PCT system, have corresponding applications from the same patent family before both offices, and, for the Brazilian filing, have entered the national phase in 2021 or 2022. INPI said eight Brazilian patent...
Brazil’s National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) issued Ordinance No. 07/2026 on 1 September 2026, easing the monthly cap for prioritized examination requests in telecommunications technologies classified under IPC H04, one of the areas facing the heaviest examination backlog. Under the new rule, each applicant may submit up to three H04 prioritized examination requests per month, compared with the previous limit of one. Requests will continue to be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis, while startups and certain protected or vulnerable groups remain exempt from the...
Brazil’s National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) has reopened its priority examination route for trademark cases based on prior-use rights. The route had been temporarily suspended in August after the relevant quota was exhausted. Its return does not create a new first-to-use trademark system: Brazil remains fundamentally registration-based, while Article 129(1) of the Industrial Property Law preserves an exception for a good-faith user that can show use in Brazil for at least six months before a third party’s filing or priority date in connection with identical, similar or related...
Brazil held a public hearing in Brasília on 14 September on counterfeit and non-compliant goods sold through digital platforms, according to the justice ministry’s on-the-day report. The hearing was intended to inform the work of CERCE, the special commission on e-commerce regulation. The official call identified product checks, seller identification, traceability and the monitoring and removal of listings as topics for discussion, linking intellectual property protection with consumer safety.For brands and cross-border sellers, the agenda offers a useful guide to the issues under...
Brazil’s INPI confirmed on 16 September 2026 that the second version of its Patent Services Module is available. National applications and PCT national-phase entry, under service code 200, can now be filed through a workflow integrating the application form with GRU fee-slip generation and online payment. A separate preliminary visit to PAG is unnecessary when using this route. The module also supports annual-fee slips and payments. Migration remains gradual: PAG and the previous electronic filing system are still available, and previously issued slips remain valid.The operational benefit...
The trade mark priority examination page of Brazil's National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI), updated on 2 September, now carries an explicit warning: payment forms under GRU code 3020 for the "virtual marketplace platform" (plataforma de mercado virtual) category are no longer being issued, because the category's quota for the period from 1 September to 31 December has been used up. The category belongs to the INPI's pilot for priority trade mark examination on strategic and public-policy grounds and is aimed at applicants who need a registration in order...
Brazil's National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) published a notice at 10:38 local time on 22 September stating that some services are temporarily unavailable and that its technical team is working to restore them as soon as possible; once services are back to normal, the INPI will publish an unavailability report (Relatório de Indisponibilidade) setting out the period of the outage. At the time of writing, the INPI's technical availability portal, where system status and unavailability reports are published, was itself showing a maintenance page. This is not the first...
