The Brazilian Patent amp; Trademark Office (PTO) has recently opened a new Public Consultation, this time on the draft guidelines for the examination of patent applications in the biotechnology field. The Public Consultation was published in the Federal Official Gazette on December 5, 2012 and any interested party may make their submissions within a 60-day-term counted as from that publication date.

The new draft provides more definitions and illustrations on biotech subject matter not expressly mentioned in Law # 9,279/96 (ESTs, primers, SNPs, cDNAs, ORFs, fusion proteins, etc.), indicating whether they would patentable or not in view of the main statutory prohibitions found in articles 10, (IX) and 18, (I) and (III) of that Law.