Brazilian_Patent_Reform

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a) whether it is a policy based on the U.S., the European or Japanese model, without
adjustments to the social-economic and technological reality of Brazil,
b) whether it is a policy that respects the international treaties signed by Brazil, but
balanced enough to implement in the national legal framework the safeguards allowed
by those treaties, with the aim of respecting other constitutionally established rights
such as the fundamental rights and guarantees of access to health, to education, culture
and information, as well as the patent clause in the Brazilian Constitution: to promote
economic, social and technological development in Brazil.
For the Brazilian State to have a clear and unified policy concerning patent and related
rights, we recommend that the Inter-ministerial Group, following the reformulations
hereby presented, becomes the forum in charge of coordinating and unifying the
decisions of the several organisms and entities of the Federal Executive Branch
regarding patent and related rights, yielding necessarily binding resolutions. In other
words, the resolutions adopted by the new Council will no longer be mere suggestions or
opinions, but must be binding, consequently, adopted as the country’s policy regarding
intellectual property and related rights.
If there is a lack of coordination and unification of the position, there is a risk of an
installed state of political and legal uncertainty, with potential economic and social
consequences that can prove extremely detrimental to the Brazilian State – and could
even be explored by foreign States, at our expense.
Presently, the GIPI is presided by the President of Camex and comprises 11 Ministries.
Camex, in its turn, “is an organism that integrates the Government Council of the
Presidency of the Republic and aims at formulating, adopting, implementing and
coordinating policies and activities regarding the foreign trade of goods and services,
including tourism.” 410 (emphasis added; translated from the original)
Camex consists on an organism of foreign trade, eminently. It deals with trade, from
the international standpoint. Dealing with promotion of science and technological
innovation per se is not among Camex’s competencies. Let alone education and
culture, or health. Camex’s competency concerns commercial aspects, or rather, foreign
trade. Camex is not competent, therefore, to deal with the promotion of science and
technological innovation, or with education, culture, and health.
Thus, those intellectual property rights serve a specific purpose: to promote scientific,
economic, cultural, technological and social progress. The purpose of patent rights, as
well as other knowledge goods, is not commercial. The Constitutional patent clause
is clear in that respect (Art. 5, XXIX), as are the goals and principles of the WTO
410 See http://www.camex.gov.br/conteudo/exibe/area/1, as stipulated by Art. 1 of Decree 4.732/2003.