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Introduction
Technology-related disputes have been increasing in both number and significance in Brazilian courts over the past years. The fields of law pertaining to markets involving high technology that have been most intensively litigated are intellectual property (including patents related to specialised products and activities, such as telecommunications and devices), copyright, unfair competition prevention (comprising different types of claims applicable to software and trade secret protection), consumer law, protection of minors and personal data protection, the latter of which represents an increasing trend in Brazilian courts.
With the adoption of new technologies in telecommunications structures and devices, there has been litigation related to standard essential patents and other kinds of patents, in which the rights holders usually request injunctive relief to immediately have a company cease manufacturing, offering or selling products or services that incorporate the protected technology.
Additionally, unfair competition litigation may involve a broad spectrum of claims, since the legal definition of unfair competition under Brazilian law encompasses, among many other cases, employment of fraudulent means by a company with the goal of diverting consumers from a competitor to itself (a broad concept that comprises various types of situations), publishing false information that may harm a competitor’s image or brand, trade dress violations (which, in general, do not fall under trademark infringement in Brazil) and even use of commercially sensitive information by a competitor or ex-employee of a company.
Typical fraudulent means include a company trying to pass itself off as, or associate itself with, a competitor to mislead consumers, thus illegally attracting clientele, or making consumers believe that a competitor’s product or service is inferior or even harmful. There has been a case, for instance, in which a mobile phone antivirus application warned users that a competitor’s antivirus app was actually malicious (i.e., it contained a virus), causing users to delete the competitor’s product.
As will be explained in detail below, the amount of litigation related to personal data has increased in recent years, especially since the Brazilian General Data Protection Law (LGPD)1 entered into force in August 2020. Individuals, associations and public entities are already filing suit based on the provisions of the LGPD to have companies cease collecting or processing certain personal data, to obtain indemnifications, or to have companies adopt measures to comply with the LGPD, among other goals. The Brazilian Data Protection Agency (ANPD) has since issued its first sanction (including a fine) against a company in Brazil, sanctions (but no fines) against a few public entities that mishandled personal data and precautionary measures against big tech companies in the context of administrative investigations. Furthermore, a number of administrative proceedings are currently being conducted.
In addition, with respect to civil associations, the number of collective actions filed by entities of this kind against technology companies has been increasing.
Some examples are lawsuits filed by civil associations questioning the ‘freemium’ model for the distribution of apps and games, whereby customers download an app or game for free and may then make purchases inside the app itself. Some have questioned the methods for making these in-app purchases (especially after news reports that unsupervised children using mobile phones or tablets were able to make such purchases), and there are ongoing lawsuits and proceedings regarding the ‘loot box’ model for mobile games. Other examples are collective lawsuits filed against social media companies related to alleged breaches of the law or personal data-related claims, in which civil associations ask mainly for collective and individual damages.
Search engines also face litigation from trademark holders that claim that their intellectual property rights were infringed upon when competitors were able to buy keywords for sponsored links that matched their trademark registrations, as Brazilian courts have a particular understanding that this is cause for finding infringement and unfair competition both from the competitor and from the search engine.
Additionally, in both the civil and the criminal spheres, there is much litigation involving data, content or information disclosure requests when the data is stored on servers (which may be physically located in Brazil or abroad) or within applications. It is common for law enforcement authorities and for plaintiffs to request subscription data or other types of data from customers that contract for cloud-related or content storage services - especially from large companies - or even content related to websites, systems, e-mail boxes or cloud storage from internet application providers.
Certain law enforcement authorities have powers to request subscription information from customers (which includes name and identity details, address and parents’ names only), but internet providers are only required to disclose other types of identifying information such as assigned internet protocol numbers (IP addresses) after receiving a valid court order from a judge, pursuant to the provisions of the Brazilian Civil Rights Framework for the Internet,2 Decree No. 8,771/2016 and Law No. 12,850/2013. If a specific company does not collect certain types of subscription data, these types of data do not need to be disclosed.
Authorities and plaintiffs can also request the takedown of websites or other content considered to be an infringement. These requests are often directed at internet application providers, which can be a hosting company, a social media company or any other company that allows users to generate and publish content through apps, websites or other online services, and not at the users or customers who created and published the allegedly infringing content.
To address this issue, a Federal Law named Civil Rights Framework for the Internet created an explicit safe harbour provision whereby the internet application provider may only be held liable in the civil sphere for infringing content if, after receiving a valid court order to take down the material, the provider does not take the appropriate measures to comply with the takedown order to the extent possible according to the limitations of its service. The Civil Rights Framework for the Internet provides that the safe harbour provision does not apply to copyright infringement claims, which are to be regulated by a separate law that has yet to be enacted. However, there are already court decisions stating that the internet application provider must at least be notified of the alleged copyright infringement before being held liable for it, otherwise it would be impossible for its business model even to exist because it could be held liable for any type of copyright issue caused by its users.
For this reason, companies that operate social media applications, such as Meta, X (formerly Twitter) or ByteDance/TikTok, or companies such as AWS, Microsoft or Google that provide hosting services cannot generally be held liable for user-generated content unless they fail to take appropriate action to take down content after receiving a court order to do so.
However, the constitutionality of this safe harbour provision was questioned in landmark cases examined by the Federal Supreme Court (STF), which, in June 2025, decided that the safe harbour provision was partially unconstitutional, changing the legal landscape drastically. The decision created in practice a new tiered liability regime applicable to internet application providers, depending on the type of content generated by users, which will be better detailed below. The full decision from the STF has not yet been published as of August 2025, so it is not in force.
In contrast, depending on the service provided by a company, it may be impossible for it to take down specific content or to take it down without causing disruption that would negatively impact on other content, which is a defence argument used in these types of cases.
This defence (i.e., the technical impossibility of complying with a court order) is also used by companies whose services incorporate end-to-end encryption or other technologies that prevent them from accessing or producing content. For instance, although it is becoming less common, there are still judges who order WhatsApp to disclose users’ private conversations, compliance with which is impossible, since the content of messages is encrypted end-to-end (i.e., it is not readable or accessible by WhatsApp but, instead, only by the individuals involved in the conversation). Brazilian courts are increasingly recognising this specific aspect of certain services and applications as a benefit to users and as a valid defence for these types of requests. Furthermore, there have been important precedents to this effect, including from the Superior Court of Justice (STJ).
Audio and video streaming services have also seen a rise in the number of distinct types of claims being litigated. The Brazilian Central Bureau for Collection and Distribution (ECAD), the national copyright collection agency governed by the Brazilian Copyright Law3 and Decree No. 9,574/2018, is very active in negotiating agreements with companies that provide streaming services, and also in filing suits against companies (or even government entities, such as municipalities) that do not pay collective royalties for the public performance of musical works or for musical works embedded in audiovisual works (e.g., in streaming services or in public events).
This is especially the case for streaming services after a 2017 STJ precedent recognised the internet as a public space and streaming as an act that entails the payment of public performance royalties. Rights holders of audiovisual or musical content are also increasingly filing suit against streaming companies claiming that their works are being exhibited without authorisation and there have been cases in which individuals portrayed in such content have filed suit claiming that they never authorised the content to be exhibited.
In addition, certain authorities take action (either by starting inquiries or filing suit) against streaming services when there is a change to the subscription’s model or available services to subscribers, such as price increases or modifications to the service’s functionalities.
Finally, patent owners have filed lawsuits against companies that operate streaming services or market devices that do so, claiming that these companies have infringed their patents, indicating that the litigation of this type seen in many other jurisdictions is also gaining traction in Brazil.
