Brazilian PTO Publishes 2027–2036 Strategic Plan: What It Means for Users of Brazil’s IP System

Brazil’s National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) released its new Strategic Plan for 2027–2036 on August 14, 2026. The plan launches a ten-year institutional planning cycle — the first of this length in the Institute’s recent history — replacing the four-year model in place through the end of 2026.

Why it matters

For companies, law firms, and rights holders that rely on INPI’s predictability, the Strategic Plan indicates the Institute’s medium- and long-term priorities for examination productivity, technology infrastructure, international engagement, and regulatory modernization — all of which may directly affect pendency, backlog reduction, and the legal certainty of IP grants.

What was announced

According to INPI’s official announcement, the plan resulted from a participatory process that included:

• Institutional diagnosis and benchmarking against leading national and international organizations (2025);

• Methodological partnership with the Public Management Innovation Lab (Pólen), part of Fiocruz’s National School of Public Health (ENSP);

• Five preparatory workshops with the Directorates (March–April 2026);

• An Extended Workshop, held on May 12–14, 2026, with 134 participants, including the President, Directors, General Coordinators, and grassroots representatives from each general coordination unit;

• A survey with 435 responses from staff, collaborators, and national and international partners.

Structure of the new planning model

INPI adopts a three-tier planning system, connected through the catchball methodology, which combines top-down direction with bottom-up feedback:

A mid-cycle review is scheduled for 2031 (Year 5), when work on the next ten-year plan (2032–2041) is also expected to begin, helping avoid a planning gap.

Mission, Vision, and Values

• Mission: to protect and promote Intellectual Property as a stimulus to innovation for Brazil’s sustainable development.

• Vision: to be a world reference in Intellectual Property.

• Values: commitment to the public interest; human-centered management and talent development; reliability and legal certainty; integrity and impartiality; operational excellence; and purposeful innovation.

The seven Strategic Objectives

1) Productivity and quality — balancing speed and technical quality in examination through process management, digital transformation (including AI), and fairer productivity metrics. Includes a proposal to establish a second-instance administrative tribunal.

2)Valuing people — restructuring the Intellectual Property career track, dynamic workforce sizing, and policies for talent attraction and retention.

3) Governance and management excellence — advocating for a redesign of INPI’s legal and institutional status, with greater administrative and financial autonomy, and adopting frameworks such as Brazil’s MEG model and ESG practices.

4) Popularizing the use of IP — expansion of the “IP in Schools” program, segmented communication, and regional presence across Brazil’s five regions.

5) Expanding international leadership — South-South cooperation, engagement within WIPO, support for the internationalization of Brazilian IP assets, and exploration of a regional processing model within MERCOSUR.

6) Monetization of IP rights — creation of an IP asset valuation service, certification of valuators, and engagement with the banking sector to enable IP as loan collateral.

7) Regulatory environment — modernization of the Industrial Property Law (Law No. 9,279/1996), anti-piracy and anti-biopiracy enforcement, administrative dispute mediation, and consolidation of a regulatory macroprocess modeled on regulatory agency practices.

Practical takeaway

The plan is expressly guidance-oriented rather than binding: concrete operational commitments, including targets, deadlines, and indicators, will be defined only in the four-year Business Plans and one-year Action Plans that implement it. For stakeholders in Brazil’s IP system, the key points to monitor will be the implementation of measures aimed at increasing examination efficiency, reducing the application backlog, expanding the use of artificial intelligence, and advancing institutional and legislative reforms.

The full plan is available on INPI’s website, under Governance > Strategic Planning. An automatically generated English version can be accessed here for ease of reference.