On 21 December 2018 the Board of the Portuguese IP Office (INPI) approved for the first time a Code of Conduct. 

The main objective of the Code of Conduct is stating “the deontological principles that prevail in the organization, the standards of conduct of workers in the performance of their mission and what users of the industrial property system should require in their relationship with the INPI”.

Following the Ethics Charter of Public Administration, the following general principles apply as a guideline for all INPI workers in their professional activity: “principles of legality, exemption and impartiality, equality, loyalty, public interest, information and hearing, integrity, competence and responsibility, urbanity and collaboration and good faith”.

In particular, INPI employees:

- “must refrain from providing assistance or advice that may be in any way preferential treatment of third parties;

- “must refrain from participating in any situation that may give rise to conflict of interests”; 

- “should not accept either for themselves or on behalf of others, gifts or other offers that may influence, or that can be interpreted as a way to influence their work; however it is possible to accept the hospitality or small gifts that, due to their value and nature, are considered within the limits of normal courtesy” (e.g. gifts of “symbolic value or commercially negligible”).

The violation of the provisions of the Code of Conduct may give rise to disciplinary liability.