Annuity Payments in Brazil: New Regulations

The Braz. Patent Office published on December 19, 2023 new rules regarding the payment and settlement of annuities, in order to enable Applicants and Patent owners to advance annuity payments.

According to such new rules, all and any annuity payment may be advanced 3 months before opening the annuity payment window, which is counted from either (1) the filing date in Brazil, in case of National applications (with or without priority claim) or (2) from the filing date of the international application, in case of National phases of PCT applications.

Besides, the official annuity system will now take advantage of any annuity payment for automatically settling any annuity yet to be paid. Thus, in case the party proceeds with the payment of the 5th annuity and the official system detects the non-payment of the 4th annuity, the 4th annuity will be settled automatically and an official action will be published for payment of any amount eventually due to the BPTO (in this example, for regularizing the 5th annuity).

Such new measures are valid upon January 1st, 2024 and also have the positive effect of avoiding both the dismissal of the patent applications and the extinction of granted patents by non-payment of annuities.

For any further assistance regarding annuities, please feel free to contact us at mail@kasznarleonardos.com.