Do acesso legal a material biológico ao patenteamento de produto biotecnológico: desafios jurídicos e efetividade do biopatenteamento no Brasil

Abstract

The starting point of this thesis is a research developed by a group of researchers from the Department of Pharmacology of UFC. After being published academically, it was referenced by two researchers at Harvard University as a relevant document in a biotech patent granted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Therefore, the questioning: Why Brazilian investment in research, development and innovation didn’t generate a biopatent in Brazil, deposited by Brazilian? The group's advisor, in response, stated that the internal rules didn’t allow it. From then on, the local legal framework was identified, analyzed, and compiled. Coming to the same conclusion, it was hypothesized that Brazil has prohibitive legislation on the patenting of biotechnological products. In order to confirm or refute this statement, we verified, quantitatively and qualitatively: academic research developed in the Northeast of Brazil, what was patented and what was placed on the market; the national normative of access to biodiversity to biopatentation has been documented; selected countries of global prominence in the biotechnology theme; their inner normas were contrasted; the supra-national norms on biodiversity and patent were identified, their influences on the internal norms and their possible antagonistic pressures; and the academic and industrial sectors, specifically the pharmaceutical industry, were questioned and interviewed. Once the initial hypothesis has been confirmed and the other obstacles (such as bureaucracy and slowness) to the development of the bioeconomy have been disregarded, the need to harmonize and integrate national public policies, especially in biotechnology, patent, innovation and environment, and finally settled on propositional institutional and normative arguments. All in order to promote the patenting of biotechnological products in Brazil, based, basically, on Comparative Law.