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Patent rights may be obtained by filing directly in relevant jurisdictions or by first filing a PCT application.
Most countries of the industrialised world are members of the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).
It
is possible to file a PCT patent application. A PCT application does
not result in the grant of an international patent. Instead a single
PCT application is considered to be an application in each and every
member country. However, it is necessary to proceed from a single PCT
application to separate and independent patent applications in each
jurisdiction for which protection is sought. A PCT application delays
the need to proceed to these individual applications to 30 months from
the earliest priority date of the application. Assuming the PCT
application is filed within 12 months of the first application for the
invention this provides an additional 18 months compared to filing
directly in individual jurisdictions.
The cost of a PCT
application is an extra cost and, generally, does not significantly
reduce the costs of proceeding to individual applications at the end of
the PCT stage. However, as part of the PCT process, the Patent Office
conducts an international search which gives an indication of the
novelty and inventiveness of the invention. Whilst the search gives a
good indication of the patentability of the invention, it is not
definitive. After proceeding to individual applications, each
jurisdiction usually conducts a further search on the application. Our
experience has been that more relevant prior art is sometimes
discovered during prosecution of these independent patent applications.
After receiving the PCT search the applicant has an opportunity to
amend the claims of the specification so as to better distinguish the
invention from the prior art. This can result in significant cost
savings, since a single action at the PCT stage may avoid essentially
the same objection being repeated with each individual application at a
later date.
International Preliminary Examination (IPE) is an
optional action which may be requested by the applicant at any stage of
the PCT process. The aim of IPE is to provide an opinion, from a patent
examiner, as to novelty and inventiveness of the invention as claimed
.It provides the applicant with further opportunities to amend the
claims and the description of the to application so as to put the
application in a better form than otherwise.
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Patents