The Federal Constitution, in its art. 93 IX, establishes the publicity of procedural acts as a rule, but the legislator reserved a specific exception for arbitration. Art. 189 IV of the 2015 Code of Civil Procedure determines that acts “that deal with arbitration” must be processed in secret whenever there is a confidentiality clause; art. 22-C of Law 9.307/1996 reinforces that, in the cooperation between an arbitrator and a state judge, the contractual confidentiality agreed upon by the parties prevails. 

Case law has consistently applied this protection regime. In February 2025, the Court of Justice of São Paulo, in Civil Appeal No. 1093678-77.2022.8.26.0100, kept confidential the execution of a report containing the source code of an anti-fraud algorithm belonging to a financial institution, highlighting the economic relevance of the sensitive information and expressly citing art. 189 IV. Along similar lines, an arbitration proceeding involving a software company required access to code repositories; thanks to the confidentiality clause, such files remained sealed to third parties even during the judicial execution, preserving industrial secrecy. 

In addition to confidentiality, arbitration offers broad procedural autonomy. Article 21 of Law 9,307/1996 allows the parties to define the language, deadlines, number of arbitrators and rules of evidence, as long as adversarial proceedings and equality are observed. This flexibility prevents nullities generated by formalities incompatible with business dynamics and contributes to the speed of dispute resolution. 

Once the procedure is concluded, the arbitration award is, as a rule, unappealable (art. 18), and may be annulled only in the cases specified in art. 32. The Superior Court of Justice, in REsp 2.105.872/RJ (2024), recognized lis pendens between annulment action and challenge to enforcement of the award, emphasizing that all questions about the validity of the award must be concentrated in a single proceeding, in order to prevent contradictory decisions. 

In practice, compliance with the award requires a mere petition to the competent court, accompanied by the arbitration decision and the Arbitration Instrument. In a paradigmatic case, a family holding company instituted a “fast track procedure” for disputes up to R$20 million; the arbitration court issued an award within 120 days and, thanks to the irrevocability, the claim was satisfied within thirty days, without reopening the merits. 

Thus, the combination of robust confidentiality, freedom of procedural design and enforceability of the judgment consolidates arbitration as an effective instrument for resolving corporate disputes with legal certainty, preservation of intangible assets and rapid enforcement of recognized rights.