Brazil’s National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) secured a decisive ruling at the Federal Regional Court of the 1st Region (TRF1) regarding patent registration no. PI0410972-4, related to liraglutide-based medications for obesity and type 2 diabetes treatment.
The court determined that there is no right to extend the patent, allowing third parties to produce the medication without legal risk and effectively overturning the first-instance decision that had improperly extended the patent term.
The TRF1 decision aligns with the Supreme Federal Court’s (STF) precedent in ADI No. 5.529, which ruled that automatic patent term extensions are unconstitutional. Through its specialized federal legal offices, INPI continues to enforce this framework, ensuring predictability, legal certainty, and the social function of patents in Brazil.
The ruling has immediate and significant implications for the pharmaceutical sector. While patents in other fields remained protected under the standard 10-year term for invention patents (or 7 years for utility models) counted from the Notice of Grant, pharmaceutical patents were not granted this privilege and were effectively terminated following the STF decision in 2021.
This opens the door for increased competition and potentially more affordable access to medicines, a timely development amid concerns of supply shortages, as highlighted by a recent Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency (Anvisa) notice regarding semaglutide-based drugs.