BPTO examination rules adjusted, requiring separate accelerated examination requests for divisional applications

Recently, at the "Patent Stakeholder Dialogue" meeting on July 29, 2025, the Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office (BPTO) announced an important proposal to amend the existing rules for the expedited examination of patent families, including divisional applications.

Under current Brazilian patent law, when a patent application files multiple divisions, an applicant only needs to file a request for accelerated examination for one of the applications to cover the entire patent family, including the parent application and the divisions, and enjoy the expedited examination process. However, under the new proposal, in the future, each divisional in the patent family, including all divisional applications, will require a separate request for accelerated examination, and a separate fee for the request will be paid for each divisional. The BPTO plans to create a specific priority channel for divisional applications.

Compared to the current expedited examination procedures under BPTO Regulations No. 79/2022 and No. 48/2024, the new regulations can reduce the time it takes to grant a patent from three years to just 88 days, including priority channels such as existing green technologies, medical devices related to the Brazilian Public Health System (SUS), and infringement cases, as well as the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) program.

Before the new regulations are issued, Yezhima recommends that applicants who intend to request accelerated examination procedures for divisional applications submit a request for accelerated examination before the end of the third quarter of 2025.