1 Intellectual Property and Standards in Brazil A
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Intellectual Property and Standards in Brazil A study prepared on support of the “American Academy of Sciences” study on IP Management and Standard-Setting Processes 1 • Denis Borges Barbosa An introduction ............................................................................................................................ 2 The content of this paper ................................................................................................................ 4 THE BRAZILIAN ENVIRONMENT .................................................................................................................. 4 Policies and practices of major domestic SDOs.............................................................................. 4 Recent evolution of national institutions....................................................................................... 6 National participation in international/multilateral SDOs ....................................................................... 6 Evolution of public purchase system ...................................................................................................... 6 Effects of standard setting in Brazilian Public Contracting ................................................................. 8 Open Standards as a policy option ................................................................................................... 9 TBT concerns related to IPR ................................................................................................................. 10 Evolution of the patent system ............................................................................................................ 11 The Brazilian patent office as a source of problems ........................................................................ 13 The INPI role in screening technology and other IP contracts ............................................................... 16 The effects sought through the registration ................................................................................... 17 The tax screening role ................................................................................................................... 19 Nature of the tax and remittance screening role ............................................................................ 19 INPI procedure .............................................................................................................................. 20 Refusal of registration ............................................................................................................. 20 Limited effects from registration.............................................................................................. 20 Full effects from registration.................................................................................................... 20 No industrial policy to be enforced .......................................................................................... 21 Evaluation of competition-related provisions ........................................................................... 21 Screening of provisions deemed otherwise not in conformity with law ..................................... 22 Effects of registration .................................................................................................................... 22 Even without registration contracts are valid and enforceable .................................................. 23 The tax and remittance effects are contingent to the registration terms ................................... 26 INPI registration does not change the agreement as executed between the parties .................. 29 The Private sector feeling about the INPI role in screening contracts .............................................. 30 Patent Office role in standard-setting .................................................................................................. 33 Local Antitrust Treatment of standards developed internationally or generated locally ............... 33 The Brazilian competition structure ............................................................................................... 34 Which criteria CADE should be expect to employ in assessing standards covered by patent pools ... 34 The patent pool cases analysed by the Brazilian Antitrust Authorities ............................................. 38 The Videolar case .................................................................................................................... 38 The Gradiente Case ................................................................................................................. 39 The One Red Case ................................................................................................................... 39 The Tacographs case ............................................................................................................... 40 Hold-up and transferability of obligations in standard setting ..................................................... 42 A case study: when Brazil failed to set a 100% national standard ................................................ 42 1 LL.B, LL.M., LL.M., J.S.D. Professor at the Public Policies Program (PPED) of the Institute of Economics of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and at the Academy of Intellectual Property and Innovation of the Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office. Some aspects of this research had the contribution of Charlene de Ávila Plaza, Fabiola Zanetti and Denise Freitas Silva. 1 As a need for a standard developed ..................................................................................................... 43 Social policies to be asserted ......................................................................................................... 43 The “technology” argument won the day ....................................................................................... 44 Technological development and the tropicalization of the Japanese standard................................. 45 IMPLICATIONS FOR US INTERESTS ............................................................................................................. 46 Some final remarks........................................................................................................................ 48 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 48 An introduction At the moment we write this paper, there is no Federal public policy 2 in Brazil dealing with the relations of the Intellectual Property system and Standard-Setting Processes 3. This fact will condition our analytical perspective: it is not possible to describe the strategies and methods utilized by the Brazilian Government to care for such relevant theme, but just to sketch the extent and character of the problem that would be the target of such policies, if they were to be created and applied. Why Brazilian Government is so careless of this relevant problem, whereas other emerging economies have dedicated significant domestic and International efforts to conduct their own policies the same issue? Simple disregard as to the importance of IP and standard-setting procedures is certainly not the cause. Although lacking as yet a uniform Intellectual Property Policy 4, the Brazilian Federal Government has been striving to create and enforce a coherent Innovation and Development strategy 5 and standard setting is a relevant portion of this drive 6. Lack of institutional opportunity for enforcing any integrated policies is also not the cause. The Brazilian Standard-Setting authority (Inmetro) and the Patent and Trademark Office (INPI) are sister agencies belonging to the same 2 We take as an example of such policy the ANSI. Procedures for the Development and Coordination of American National Standards. New York: ANSI, 1987. 3 There were no published policies or regulations on this matter. To confirm the inexistence of such policies, even on an elaborative stage, the author consulted personally with the Deputy-Minister of Science and Technology, the Secretary of the Interdepartmental Steering Group on Intellectual Property (GIPI) and the Head of the Intellectual Property Section of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 4 On the Brazilian interdepartmental rivalry and conflicting policies in some areas of Intellectual Property and Innovation, as biotechnology, agrochemicals and health. See BARBOSA, D. B.. Patents and the Emerging Markets of Latin America – Brazil, in ABBOTT, F., CORREA, C., DRAHOS, P. Emerging Markets and the World Patent Order: Rules for an Altered Landscape, ANU e Press, 2012. A preliminary version of this paper may be found at: http://www.denisbarbosa.addr.com/arquivos/novidades/tallahassee3.pdf. 5 See OECD (2006b), OECD Economic Surveys – Brazil, 2006/08, OECD, Paris; and Shaver, Lea Bishop, Access to Knowledge in Brazil: New Research on Intellectual Property, Innovation and Development. ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE IN BRAZIL: NEW RESEARCH ON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, INNOVATION AND DEVELOPMENT, Lea Shaver, ed., Bloomsbury Academic, Bloomsbury Publishing, UK, USA, 2010; Hofstra Univ. Legal Studies Research Paper no. 10-49. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1729837. 6 MONTEIRO, C. D. M.; TORRES, A. A.. Brazil, OECD Standard Setting 2010, found at http://www.oecd.org/regreform/liberalisationandcompetitioninterventioninregulatedsectors/47381304.pdf.Visited May