O arquivamento de depósitos de pedido de patente para produtos relacionados à doença de Chagas: uma análise documental

Abstract

This work is inserted into the operational logic of the patent system and its relation to neglected diseases. A single-focus was necessary to enable the understanding of the closure of patent requests phenomenon, therefore only one out of 19 diseases considered neglected by the National Industrial Property Institute was selected, in favor of an approach that could investigate, in documents, the predominant reason for patent request closure phenomenon. It is possible to point out that the literature on patent request closure is scarce, both in terms of conceptual approach as well as in empirical approach. Thus, this paper focuses on the empirical study of patent request closure on products regarding Chagas Disease. For this purpose, combined research and analysis methods and techniques were created, to apprehend the research object and enable a conclusion that is less than mere speculation or a constructed theory that is segregated from empirical data. We opted, then, on delimiting the research through an exploratory case study method, on the guidelines presented in the literature of Robert Yin. The document analysis technique was combined with the case study method, according to the guidelines and ideas presented on the literature of André Cellard, and we performed described inferences lined with the ideas of Lee Epstein and Gary King. As a result of the data collection on the National Industrial Property Institute database, we found 81 deposits for patent requests for Chagas Disease-related, 51 of them being Brazilian. Out of the 51 Brazilian deposits, 46 (90%) involved at least one Public University (State or Federal) or Public Foundations for Research and Education. As a result, extracted from document analysis, we can observe that, out of 20 deposits of patent requests for Chagas Disease-related products that were closed, 14 (70%) were closed due to the lack of annuity payment. It was not possible, with the research techniques used until the present moment, to infer the reasons behind the lack of payment.