By Gabriel Francisco Leonardos

Legal framework

The growth of the Brazilian market and economy is parallelled by the increase of counterfeiting activities. The enforcement of IP rights involves planning, technology, intelligence, training and coordination, with support from a number of laws and treaties, as well as the relevant rules of the Federal Constitution, the Civil Code, the Criminal Code, the Civil Procedure Code, the Criminal Procedure Code and administrative statutory instruments. The legal framework for anticounterfeiting includes:

• the Industrial Property Law (Law 9,279/96);

• the Copyright Law (Law 9,610/98); and

• the Software Law (Law 9,609/98).

In addition, Brazil is a signatory to the main international IP instruments, such as:

• the Paris Convention for the Protection

of Industrial Property (as reviewed in Stockholm in 1967);

• the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs);

• the Berne Convention f