Lessons from the Past and the Road for the Future

Description

In this lecture by Pedro Paranaguá, he discussed the report issued by the Brazilian House of Representatives in 2013 as part of an effort to revamp the country’s patent law. Brazil does not want to be a mere exporter of commodities, neither does it want to be a simple consumer of knowledge goods. Brazil wants to be at the cutting edge of innovation; it wants to innovate to compete. Paranaguá’s presentation introduced the current state of affairs of the Brazilian patent system, with a focus on pharmaceuticals. He presented the main findings and recommendations of the 2013 report, including the tabling of a bill to fix the mistakes of the 1990s. The talk was followed by a discussion with a panel of experts.

Panelists

Lecturer Bio

Pedro Paranaguá has been a Lecturer in Law at the LL.M. in Business Law at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV), Brazil, since 2007. Mr. Paranaguá is also the lead Advisor to the ruling Workers Party at the Brazilian House of Representatives for Internet, copyright, patent, data privacy, cybercrime, and related matters. He is responsible for drafting the Brazilian Internet Framework Bill (“Marco Civil”) for the rapporteur, including provisions on net neutrality, ISP liability, and privacy. He coordinated the 350-page report, “Brazil’s Patent Reform,” for the Brazilian House of Representatives. He has been an invited instructor at Duke University School of Law (2011), lecturer in law at FGV Rio, and has held numerous other lectureships in Brazil and abroad (Lecturer in Brazil and abroad (Brazil’s Supreme Court and Senate, Yale, UCLA, UNESCO, UNCTAD, WIPO). He was Director of the A2K Brazil Program at the Center for Technology and Society (CTS-FGV), and co-representative of Creative Commons in Brazil (2005-2010). He produced commissioned studies on copyright and technology for the country’s Culture Ministry, and served as FGV-delegate at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva (2005-2009). He has also served as a member of the Brazilian Free Software Project. From 2001 to 2003, he was an IP lawyer at Gusmão & Labrunie, where he was Project Manager on patents and access to medicines. He is the author of the books Copyright Law (Portuguese) (with Sergio Branco) and Patent Law (Portuguese) (with Renata Reis). Mr. Paranaguá holds a LL.M. (cum laude) in Intellectual Property, Internet and Policy (London) and is a Doctoral candidate (S.J.D.) at Duke University School of Law, where he is finalizing his thesis, “Brazil’s Copyright Law Reform: Tropicália 3.0?”, under the supervision of Professor Jerome Reichman.

Sponsored by the HLS Brazilian Studies Association, with support from the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.