On December 29, 2020, the BRPTO issued Ordinance #405, establishing new rules for the submission of Sequence Listing for patent applications pending in Brazil.

According to Ordinance #405/2020, during 2021, Sequence Listing can be submitted before the BRPTO either following the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) ST.25 Standard (.TXT format) or, alternatively, the ST.26 Standard (.XML format). However, as of January 1, 2022, the Sequence Listing must be submitted following the ST.26 Standard (.XML format).

The Sequence Listing following the ST.26 Standard may be created, edited and verified by means of the WIPO Sequence tool, available here.

The most important aspects to be considered when drafting a Sequence Listing, maintained in Ordinance #405/2020, are summarized below:

• all the linear sequences of 4 (four) or more continuous L-amino acids of a peptide or a protein and all the linear sequences that have ten (10) or more continuous nucleotides should be included in the Sequence Listing, even those that have not been claimed, for example, PCR probes, provided they meet the conditions set out herein; and
• branched sequences, sequences with less than ten (10) nucleotides, sequences with less than four (4) L-amino acids and amino acid sequences that contain at least one D-amino acid, as well as sequences comprising nucleotides or amino acids different from those listed in Tables 1, 2, 3 and 4 attached to Ordinance #405/2020 must be included in the specification of the patent application and cannot be included in the Sequence Listing.

The new rules are available at the BRPTO’s website and can be downloaded here (originalversion in Portuguese).

For more information on this matter, please contact us at patents@lickslegal.com, and we will be glad to assistyou.

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