New Science, Technology And Innovation Act​

This past Monday, the President signed Law No. 13,243/16 known as the New Science, Technology and Innovation Act ("Act"). The Act amends the Innovation Act of 2004 (Law Nº 10,973/2004) and regulates incentives for scientific development, research, technological capacitation and innovation.

The Act seeks to foster public-private partnerships in technology-related areas to encourage and facilitate scientific development in Brazil.

The Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation and the National Council for Scientific and Technologic Development also released, together with the approval of the Act, the Bid Notice to allocate public funds for scientific and technologic research projects for the next two years ("Chamada Universal CNPq/MCTI Nº 1/2016").

Highlights of the Act

In addition to updating certain aspects of the Innovation Act of 2004, the Act introduces changes that will foster research and technological development ("R&D") in Brazil involving, in particular, public- private partnerships. Among the novelties of the Act, we highlight the following:

(i) The role of the federal, state and municipal governments in the R&D sector was broadened to include the possibility of their participation in international technological research, initiatives to innovate technology including technology environments, incubators and technological complexes;

(ii) Public bids or public tenders are no longer required for technology transfers to develop technology executed between the Scientific, Technology and Innovation Institutes and private companies and for the acquisition of a product or contracting with suppliers of a product for research and development; these products are defined in the Act as all goods, supplies, services and works required for undertaking scientific and technological research, technology development or technological innovation, which are listed in...