Legislative Implementation of Flexibilities - Brazil

Title:	Article 10 (IX) and 18 of the Industrial Property Law No. 9.279 of 14/05/1996 (as last amended by Law No.10.196, of 14/02/2001)
Field of IP:	Patents
Type of flexibility:	Exclusion from patentability of plants
Summary table:

Provisions of Law

Article 10. The following are not considered to be inventions or utility models:

IX. all or part of natural living beings and biological materials found in nature, even if isolated therefrom, including the genome or germoplasm of any natural living being, and the natural biological processes.

18. The following are not patentable:

I. anything contrary to morals, standards of respectability and public security, order and health;

II. substances, materials, mixtures, elements or products of any kind, as well as the modification of their physical-chemical properties and the respective processes for obtainment or modification, when resulting from the transformation of the atomic nucleus; and

II. all or part of living beings, except transgenic microorganisms that satisfy the three requirements of patentability-novelty, inventive step and industrial application-provided for in Article 8 and which are not mere discoveries.

Sole Paragraph. For the purposes of this Law, transgenic microorganisms are organisms, except for all or part of plants or animals, that express, by means of direct human intervention in their genetic composition, a characteristic normally not attainable by the species under natural conditions.