By Adrian Gonzalez. Patents Engineer.
Table of Contents
The new Technical Note INPI/CPAPD No. 01/2023 issued by the Brazilian Patent Office aims at deepening and harmonizing the technical understanding with a view to greater predictability of the acts issued by said agency with respect to the patentability of elite events.
This Technical Note does not bring any legal innovation, addressing only issues not fully contemplated in the Guidelines for the Examination of Patent Applications in the Area of Biotechnology, established by Normative Instruction INPI/PR/No 118/2020.
What is an Elite Event?
An elite event refers to a plant modification that involves the insertion of exogenous DNA using molecular tools, such as a gene construct. This insertion must occur at a specific location in the plant genome, explicitly determined by the polynucleotide sequences flanking the insertion. Moreover, the elite event should confer a superior technical effect to the plant compared to other transformation events, demonstrating that it is not the result of arbitrary selection. The selection process of the elite event varies based on the desired objective and characteristics to be conferred to the organism. Read more