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IPR area will become increasingly more important
By Dannemann Siemsen
What are the goals of your firm in the short and long term?
Our firm was originally founded in 1900 and will complete this year 114 years of existence. Our focus has always been to provide not only a high quality and efficient services to our clients but especially to understand their business needs and how we can help our clients achieve solid growth and surpass the competition and become a leader on their market.
Properly using IPR as tool for our clients' business success has been our goal. This proposition requires tremendous investments in forming and retaining technically outstanding talents and building infrastructure to support our professional team. This continues to be our main objective and our pledge to the clients.
In the last decades the firm has expanded not only in terms of number of professionals and staff but also has been successful in growing from a full IP firm to a expanded practice one. This move has showed very positive results as the clients who have trusted the firm traditionally on IP area supported the growth of our practice into new neighboring areas, such as franchising, environmental law, distribution, commercial contracts, consumer law, regulatory, telecom, health care etc.
In view of the experience of such expansion our firm has chosen to invest in other related legal areas where we can bring our organizational background as a strategic ingredient and apply our vision of assisting the clients to be competitive and successful.
Does your country provide enough importance to IP?
The intelectual property rights unfortunately continue to be seen in Brazil with a substantial suspicious by the authorities.
Even certain segments of the local industry also misunderstands the benefits and how to use the IPR as a tool for development. This ignorance contributes for reluctance to embrace IPR as a tool for business strategy model.
Although the laws in Brazil seem to be adequate and modern, the application of the laws suffers from the lack of understanding of the benefits of using such business mechanism.
As a result, Brazil experiences the absence of real interest in protecting IPR efficiently. So the Patent and Trademark Office does not have the political support to resolve the backlog problem and certain areas, such pharmaceutic industry, are confronted with policies that avoid or at least delay the grant of patents.This perception issue is a major paradigm that has to addressed and resolved for Brazil to continue to grow in the international economic scenario.
How much has technology changed the profession?
Technology has changed the IPR practice dramatically. The mobility allowed by technology has made the practice more intense. Clients expect answers immediately. The cases are not only dealt with instantly but the order of priority of work had to change too. The attorneys are now connected 24 hours per day and can work from anywhere in the world.
The research tools and systems available gave the freedom of working from home or traveling but press for lowering costs. Paradoxally, such digital tools allow the firms and companies to work more efficiently but drive the costs up to. In fact, although there are more free data bases and other information available for free on the intent, the reality is that the firm now have to continuously invest in new technologies and systems, which many times generate gigantic investments.
There is this digital misperception. The clients assume the costs of the attorneys should be cheaper as the technology permits to cut work time, the firms are faced with increasing costs from the IT side.
Has technology eased contact with clients?
Indeed. Nowadays the clients and the attorneys work from anywhere and we are in contact online full time. Although nothing can replace meetings face to face in many instances, the current work environment is totally digital. Emails, social media networks, SMS, WhatsApp, chat rooms, cloud files, extranets, browsers, translation machines, teleconference, telepresence and all other new communication capabilities have changed the way the world operates. All this has affected substantially the waylegal work is performed as well.
Patents, domain, Internet piracy and other issues have increased IP influence areas. Does that generate an increasing specialization in the firms and the professionals?
In parallel to the way of doing legal work, the technology continues to open up new areas of practice and increase the IPR business and the sort of service that can be offered to clients.
The commercial use of the Internet created new legal issues, which added an entire new field of law. Even old problems like piracy have now reached new levels of complexity and require the firms to review litigation strategies and anti counterfeiting initiatives.
New software related inventions and methods of doing business patents are phenomena that are here to stay and attorneys should continuously study new area and get more educated to address all future challenges.
Will IP be one of the top Law branches in narby future?
As the Brazilian economy continue to evolve around innovation, it is natural that the IPR area will become increasingly more important. The Brazilian government has launched a plan called Brasil Maior with one of the main focus on patent and IP support to allow for capitalization of IPR under the innovation incentives. It is presumably natural that the companies will recognized that IPR will play a strategic and decisive role on feed backing the investments for new technologies and stronger participation on the marketplace. With this surge of IPR for the business entrepreneurship the Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office (INPI) will need to hire more examiners, invest in IT tools for examination and provide a better infrastructure. Without a solid and fast examination practice by INPI all initiatives to drive the local economy towards innovation will be a temporary effort without enduring returns for the society. In any event this trend is confirmed by the number of new IP firms that surfaced in Brazil in the last few years and by the attempts by general practice firms to create an IP desk.
Dannemann Siemsen
Recognised as leaders in Intellectual Property in Latin America, we are a team of experts who has been dedicated to defending industrial and intellectual property since 1900. We operate throughout the world, encompassing first-rate civil and criminal advocacy, covering diverse areas of Law and all segments of industry. We are partners of large national and international companies.
Today we have offices in three Brazilian state capitals and we have gathered a team of practitioners that lead in knowledge of intellectual property, litigation, contracts and other areas of Law.
This allows us to advise our clients in the main legal proceedings, making us a strategic partner in the pursuit of innovation and knowledge.
We have more than 280 lawyers and an extensive team of Industrial Property Agents – an experienced and specialised technical team that is kept up-to-date with the transformations and demands of the market.
We are the support for innovation and knowledge.
We live in a dynamic world, where knowledge is decisive for any company to stand out in the market. We believe in the value of human capital and in creativity as a source of innovation.
With more than a century of experience and a wide range of services, we are proud to be the foundation for our clients to seek innovative and disruptive paths.
