Brazilian Patent Office (BPO) announces that the limit of PPH requests for 2022 has been reached

The Brazilian Patent Office (BPO) announced on September 29, 2022, that the limit of PPH (Patent Prosecution Highway) requests for the year of 2022 has been reached. Such limit affects all technical areas. This means that any additional filed PPH request will not be considered until the end of this year.

The rules concerning the PPH program dictate that a limited number of requests will be allowed per year. Ordinance INPI/PR nº 13 of April 01, 2022, establishes that Phase III of the PPH Program is restricted to 800 PPH requests considering all sections of the IPC per annual cycle, which would obey the order of the date and time of the request protocol.

After the PPH annual cycle, which ends on December 31, 2022, it will be possible to file PPH requests in accordance with a new Ordinance, which may be published soon. Therefore, a new limit will be available from January 1, 2023 to December 31, 2023.

Should the Applicants still wish to enter the PPH Program, it would be advisable to file the requests as soon as 2023 begins. It seems the interest for PPH has increased over the past years, as shown by recent BPO’s statistics.

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