For twenty-five years, Brazilian patent law came with a built-in guarantee: patents would remain in force for at least ten years from grant, no matter what. That rule, tucked into the sole paragraph of Article 40 of Law 9,279/1996, existed to offset INPI’s chronic examination backlog. In May 2021, the Supreme Federal Court (STF) struck it down in ADI 5,529, holding that it made patent term hostage to administrative delay rather than tied to a fixed, foreseeable date, in violation of the constitutional principle that industrial property rights must be temporary. The Court’s modulation of effects preserved extensions already granted for most issued patents but stripped the benefit retroactively from pharmaceutical and health-related patents, and from any case already under judicial challenge as of April 7, 2021. What the ruling did not do was fix the delay itself.
With no statutory alternative, patent holders turned to the courts, seeking judicial correction of patent term based on administrative delay. The theory borrowed its name from the United States’ Patent Term Adjustment (PTA), and Brazilian practitioners now use the same shorthand.
These PTA lawsuits are where the current litigation trend began, and it has only picked up speed since, running in parallel with legislative efforts to give the mechanism an actual legal basis.
Roughly 103 PTA lawsuits have been filed in Brazil to date (as of June 2026), and the results have not been kind to patent holders. Of the 44 merits decisions issued so far, only 4 have recognized a right to term adjustment; the other 40 were dismissed. The appellate courts have been no more receptive: all seven decisions from the Federal Court of Appeals for the Federal District Circuit, and both decisions from the Superior Court of Justice, have gone against patent holders.
Filings tell their own story. There was an initial surge right after the Supreme Court’s 2021 ruling, with just over 25 lawsuits filed that year. Numbers then tapered off steadily, dropping below 10 new filings in 2025. That trend has now reversed sharply: 27 new PTA lawsuits have already been filed as of June 2026, more than in 2021 itself.
The timing is not a coincidence. This resurgence tracks the introduction of Bill No. 5,810/2025, which has put the idea of a formal PTA mechanism back on the table. Under the Bill, a patent holder facing administrative delay not of its own making could ask INPI to open a proceeding to adjust the patent term proportionally to the delay and capped at five years, provided the request is filed within 60 days of grant.
The Bill’s transitional provision is doing much of the work here. Holders of patents already granted, and still in force, would get a one-time window, 60 days from the law’s publication, to request the same kind of adjustment. But there is a catch: this exceptional route is only open to patent holders who already challenged the administrative delay in court before the law takes effect.
That single requirement likely explains a good part of the recent filing spike. Patent holders appear to be filing now to keep the option open in case the Bill passes with that transitional language intact.
The Bill itself still has a long road ahead. It remains at an early stage in the Chamber of Deputies, where it is expected to go through the Committee on Industry, Commerce and Services and the Committee on Constitution and Justice before it could even reach the Senate.
Given where things stand, patent holders would do well to keep a close eye on this Bill, and on its transitional provision in particular. If the prior-litigation requirement survives, filing a PTA lawsuit today may do double duty: not just as an attempt at judicial relief, but as insurance against being shut out of the administrative mechanism the Bill would create.
The courts, for now, are not buying the PTA theory. But the legislative process has changed the calculus. The real question is no longer just whether a given lawsuit will succeed. It is whether that lawsuit, win or lose, buys a seat at the table if Congress ultimately acts.