Proceedings of ENCIT 2008 12 th Brazilian Congress of Thermal Engineering and Sciences Copyright © 2008 by ABCM November 10-14, 2008, Belo Horizonte, MG THE USE OF PATENTS DOCUMENTATION INFORMATION IN THE ENGINEERING TEACHING AND ACADEMIC RESEARCH Nunes, Jeziel, jeziel@inpi.gov.br Oliveira, Luciana, luciana@inpi.gov.br Barcelos, Sérgio, barcelos@inpi.gov.br Instituto Nacional da Propriedade Industrial, Praça Mauá, nº 7 Sala 716 – Rio de Janeiro - Brasil Abstract. The Patent System, such an important technical source, answers for about 70% of technical publications in the world, but is barely used in professionals’ education of Engineering in Brazil. Some initiatives to introduce the knowledge and use of Industrial Property information – IP, in academic environment occurred in Economic and Juridic fields. The present work aims to demonstrate the viability of using technical information contained in Patent Documentation in the Engineering teaching, mainly in disciplines concerned with design, innovation and production, complementing engineer´s education with useful knowledge to their Professional acting, as the protection of results of researches. Concerning to academic research, it is possible to identify the protected Technologies, avoiding duplicity of effort, reducing initial costs, discovering unpublished fields for new and original researches, as well as appropriating financial results from the protection. The international context of Research and Development aids the teachers to foresee new technological directions in their fields and aids them to evaluate more accurately these possible changes implications in academic teaching and research. Keywords: engineering teaching, industrial property, patent information, academic research 1. INTRODUCTION During the last years the discussion of themes such as Science, Technology and Innovation became a constant in all Country’s economical life sections, given its repercussion on the development process of Brazil and other countries of the international community. The current international conjuncture presents intransigent competition among the countries, stratifying them between the ones that develops and sell technologies and those that acquire them and remain dependents. Brazil has been moving forward in this discussion, but still finds many impediments, most of the time of bureaucratic order, to implant a new mentality that will allow them to get the quality jump capable to put them, definitively, in a more coherent position with that the Country already reached in terms of scientific publications. In relation with this parameter, Brazil is in a comfortable position; he is the 11 st position in the international rank, with 1.8% of the world total published articles. However, the correlation between the performance of the scientific publications and the applications of patent applications indicates the existence of great discrepancies between the two protection procedures, as it is verified in the incipient Academy’s performance in Industrial Property area in the last 15 years. This situation can be observed in the studies elaborated by Assumpção (1999), and Nunes and Goulart de Oliveira (2007) with some results showed in Fig. 1. Figure 1. University applications evolution from 1990 to 2004 The repercussion of this disinformation and consequent attitude has two serious components: the first is that the research accomplished in public universities is, in its majority, sponsored by public resources and the developed technology rarely arrives to the Society use. The second is that Brazil’s participation in terms of technology purchase is