Propiedad industrial e intelectual y desarrollo tecnológico

33 JntellectuaJ Property in Brazjl and the ... to the technological development of Brazilian industry. The bold and thoughtful conclusíons of this report included the following: 'The eapacity of Brazilian enterprises to innovate did not match the dynamism with which the industrialization process was undertaken. Little importaneewas attributed in Brazil to the effective assimilatiort ofimported technologies, thereby being understood the capacity not only to reproduce products and industrial processes, but also to introduce relevant modifica– tions". As a result, investments in science and teehnology add up to 0.5% of the GDP, compared to 2.3% - 2.9% in developed countries. The national prívate sector has little to do with research and development, beíng respon– sible for 11% of the total investment, compared to, for example, 30% in Italy and 70% in Japan. At the same time as internalization of foreign teehnology was being choked off, internal research and development was virtually non-existent. Among the five actions recommended as essential for teehnological capacitation of industry: "purehase and absorption of technology resulting from the faet that the base of technological progress is constituted of the complementarity generated by the association of foreign technologies and internal generatíon of technologies". By the way, in the last ten years expenditure on importatíon of technology has dropped in a frightening degree, from US$321 million in 1980 to US$135 million in 1988. The aggregate ten year expenditure for 1979-88 was US$2.2 billion, considered a ludicrously Iow number for a country with an industrial park the size of Brazil. In conclusion this report recites: "The outdatedness of the technology of Brazílian industry ... is proven by the prices and by the quality of goods and services, when compared to similar leaders in the international market. The delay in the change of the import substitution model for one of competitiveness, excess state paternalism and the closing of the Brazilian eeonomy are the most frequent explanations". It is clear that important measures will be adopted-certainly not without bureaucratic and prívate sector resistance. Important steps already have been taken. These inelude the following: - reevaluation of the permitted royalty rate on technology which, currently, as noted, is embedded in a tax regulation applied mostly co-extensively by the INPI; - reconsideratíon of the prohibidon against imposition of export restrictíons on the license oC teehnology;