HERBAL MEDICINE PATENTS IN BRAZIL: AN ANALYSIS OF STATUS OF PATENT APPLICATIONS IN THE PERIOD OF 1995-2017

Abstract

Brazil is a megadiverse country, as it shows about 20% of the world’s biodiversity, which allows the country to have strategic conditions to participate effectively in the market of innovative bioproducts such as herbal medicines. In this work we sought to monitor the patent applications for herbal medicines published in the INPI (1995-2017), as well as to verify the profile of holders of patent applications for herbal medicines from national applicants, and to analyze the corresponding INPI dispatches. The search was performed in the Espacenet and INPI databases. Out of the 876 applications from Brazilian patent applications, 377 came from independent inventors, 147 from companies, and 257 from universities, among others. From the total of applications, 59.2% were denied or archived, and only 12 patents were granted (1.3% of the total deposited), which leads to the conclusion that Brazilian depositors are failing to turn their research on herbal medicines into inventions protected by the patent system. The large number of applications archived for nonpayment and for not having requested the technical examination shows the difficulty of the applicants to reach the technical examination stage. Therefore, the emergence of Law 13,123/2015 and its Decree 8,772/2016 are likely to have no effect on the improvement of the patent performance of national applicants, if the technical quality of the applications and the follow up of the requests are not improved to avoid rejections and archiving.