I recently had the opportunity to participate in the Fordham IP Institute conference, which brought together judges and practitioners from jurisdictions across the globe.
One of the highlights was the closing session: a panel composed entirely of judges from leading courts, including the UK, Germany, the U.S., China, Korea, and Brazil (to name a few). It was a rare opportunity to see how different systems approach certain issues.
Among the many topics discussed, one in particular stood out: the role of injunctions in patent litigation and how different systems approach early-stage judicial intervention.
It was a very energetic and high-level discussion, but also a very practical one. And one point that kept resurfacing, especially in conversations with practitioners from other jurisdictions, was the growing attention around injunctions in Brazil.
Not so much whether they are available, but how they actually work in practice.
For many practitioners used to the U.S. or UK systems, this still feels somewhat counterintuitive.
The first reaction is often to assume that the legal threshold must be lower, or that courts are simply more permissive. But that’s not really the case. The legal test is not particularly different. What changes, in practice, is how Brazilian courts approach risk, timing, and the role of judicial intervention.
And that distinction matters. Because once you look more closely, the question is no longer whether injunctions are available in Brazil. It becomes clear how the dynamics of litigation actually work.
One of the main differences is how courts perceive urgency. In Brazil, preliminary relief is not treated as an exceptional disruption of the process. It is part of the process. Judges are generally more concerned with preventing a situation from becoming irreversible than with the abstract risk of acting too early. Instead of focusing only on preserving the status quo, there is a stronger emphasis on ensuring that the final decision will still be meaningful in practice.
That alone explains a lot. Where delay can erode the value of the right, courts are more willing to step in.
The procedural structure reinforces this. Courts are comfortable granting injunctions on an ex parte basis when justified, particularly where waiting for the other side could undermine the measure. At the same time, the system is largely based on written submissions, allowing decisions to rely on documentary evidence and well-structured arguments, without multiple hearings or procedural layers.
This often leads to something that surprises foreign parties: courts engaging with the substance of the dispute very early on. Not in a definitive way, but enough to assess likelihood of success and risk of harm with real depth.
There is also a broader legal instinct at play. While common law systems tend to be more cautious about interfering with the status quo,
Brazilian courts often ask a different question: will waiting make the right ineffective? That perspective naturally leads to a more proactive use of interim measures.
None of this means that injunctions are granted lightly. If anything, the opposite is true. Because courts engage early, the burden on the initial submission is higher. The case needs to be clear from the outset. Technical issues, commercial impact, and legal arguments must be translated into something the judge can quickly understand and rely on.
In many cases, that first moment is where the case is effectively shaped.
This has practical consequences, especially in sectors where timing is critical. In technology, telecommunications, and life sciences, early decisions can influence the entire trajectory of a dispute. The availability of injunctions is not just procedural. It becomes strategic and, in many cases, necessary for the effectiveness of judicial intervention.
For practitioners used to slower procedural build-up elsewhere, this requires some adjustment. In Brazil, the window for action opens earlier, and what happens at that stage carries more weight.
At this point, most international players already know that injunctions are available in Brazil. But knowing that they exist is very different from understanding how they operate in practice.
And that is where Brazil becomes particularly interesting. Not because it is an outlier, but because interim measures operate with a level of immediacy and practical impact that other systems often reserve for more exceptional situations.
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Robert Daniel is a partner at Daniel Law in Brazil, focusing on intellectual property litigation and technology-related disputes. He has international experience, having worked at an IP law firm in the United Kingdom, and holds an LL.M. from the University of California, Berkeley. His background provides a comparative perspective on common law systems and Brazilian litigation practice, particularly in the context of cross-border disputes and enforcement strategies.