Importance of Regulation in the Brazilian Intellectual Property Legal System and the Consequences of the Delay for the Development of the Country

Abstract

Intellectual property rights have their roots in the Paris Conventions (1883) and Bern (1883) and will materialize in contemporary society through TRIPS. Brazil, as a signatory country to these international agreements, sought to adapt its domestic System of knowledge protection. However, it was a relatively tardy measure, considering that implementation took place, in the late 1970s, through the Industrial Property Law (Law nº 9279/1996), which had a high cost to the country in terms of development. As if the time delay were not enough, the protection of knowledge in Brazil was born out of date, considering the advance of patent rights on biotechnology. By denying patents on genetic and modified material, the country opened its borders to patent applications requirements from developed nations, based on TRIPS. Thus, from the dialectical method combined with the hypothetical-deductive method, this work seeks to investigate the intellectual property rights of Brazil, having international treaties and national legislation as references. The results show that the country paid dearly for the negligence in protecting its knowledge, which placed it in the rear of scientific and technological development, and resulting in the expansion of the technological domain of developed nations in Brazilian territory.