"Can you give us a brief overview on how this region
is unique...

...in my opinion, there are three major differences that we can highlight when we talk about the Brazilian patent system and the U.S. patent system. The first of them is the so-called 10-year rule, which relates to the expiration date of patents in Brazil. The INPI, the Brazilian patent office, takes a long time to issue patents. It actually takes more than 10 years on average, based on the 2018 statistics of the old patent office. This means that the term of protection to Brazilian patents will not necessarily be counted from the filing date, but maybe from the issuance. Whenever the INPI takes more than 10 years to examine and issue a patent, such a patent will expire 10 years after issuance, which means there are really old applications standing at the INPI, as well as really old technologies still covered by patents in Brazil. And there are several brand drugs in Brazil that do not face generic competition because of that group. It is important to note that in Brazil, there are no patent terms.

A second feature, which is very different about Brazil, is that the Brazilian judiciary is very generous in granting preliminary and permanent injunctions. Actually, it's all about injunctions in Brazil, as we don't see a lot of cases settling or a lot of patent owners receiving damages for infringement. Preliminary injunctions are actually very common, and it's possible to retain ex parte preliminary injunctions, which means one side is talking to the judge without the other party’s knowledge.

And another feature that we may list as relevant and different is the fact that there is no regulatory data protection or exclusivity in Brazil, meaning that it's all about patents."