There are a few seats still available for the AIPLA PCT Seminar. This will be Monday and Tuesday, July 24-25, 2017 in Crystal City, Virginia.
Yours truly is among the presenters for this seminar.
For more information or to register, click here.
Category Archives: PCT
Search fee for ISA/EP to increase on September 1
The search fee for US applicants at the EPO will increase on September 1, 2017. The search fee is presently $1992 but will increase to $2099. Here is how the search fees will rank after the fee change: Continue reading
ISA/IL search fee increases today
As I reported on May 5, 2017, the Israel Patent Office made plans to increase the search fee for US filers from $911 to $963. The fee change takes effect today.
At the present time, very few US PCT filers pick ISA/IL. So this fee increase will not affect very many US PCT filers.
Most US filers file their PCT applications in EFS-Web because most US filers use RO/US for their PCT filings. EFS-Web was updated today to reflect this new fee amount. So there is not much risk of a US filer accidentally paying the old (smaller) fee.
Reluctant to migrate from PCT-SAFE to ePCT?
A colleague at a very well known patent firm asks this:
Some of our clients (a few very large, sophisticated patent clients) refuse to let us move from PCT-Safe to ePCT for their matters since they claim the ePCT servers are located outside the US and that, at a minimum, a foreign-filing license would first be required prior to filing. Do you have any related experiences with clients? If so, how did you address their concerns?
First let me offer a compliment to those companies. It is really good that they think about the FFL issue. A company (or a practitioner) that fails to pay attention to FFL issues can really run into trouble later. Continue reading
ISA/IL search fee to increase on July 1, 2017
The Israel Patent Office presently charges a search fee of $911 for US filers. On July 1, 2017 this fee will increase to $963.
At the present time, very few US PCT filers pick ISA/IL. So this fee increase will not affect very many US PCT filers.
ISA/RU search fee increases today
Today the search fee paid by a US filer for the Russian patent office as International Searching Authority increases from $449 to $482. (I first reported this here on March 17, 2017.)
Filers who use EFS-Web to file in RO/US, or who use PCT-SAFE or ePCT to file in RO/IB, will not need to worry about getting this right. Each of those e-filing systems has already been updated today to reflect the new fee.
An opportunity to save money on a PCT search fee
As I mentioned in a blog post on March 17, the search fee that a a US PCT filer would pay for the Russian patent office will increase on May 1, 2017. The search fee, presently $449, will increase to $482.
This offers an opportunity to save a little money. If you are a US filer, and you were thinking about filing a PCT application in which you choose ISA/RU, and you were thinking of filing the PCT application on May 1, just file it instead a day early on April 30. This will save $33 in fees.
What does TYFNIL mean?
Recently in the Design Listserv a Paris Convention question arose. The question was, under Article 4 of the Paris Convention, could a design application claim priority from an earlier utility application? It’s a good question and if you have any thoughts about this, I urge you to join that listserv and share your thoughts.
But what prompts this blog article is the acronym “TYFNIL”. A listserv member pointed out that even if the Office examining the design application were to find nothing wrong with such a priority claim, the owner of the design protection would never really know for sure where they stood until TYFNIL. What does that mean? Continue reading
USPTO wrongly bouncing inventor declarations
Over on the EFS-Web listserv (the email discussion group for patent filers at the USPTO) there was an interesting discussion recently. A number of USPTO customers (frequent patent filers at the USPTO) were talking about USPTO’s bad habit of bouncing inventor declarations that have nothing wrong with them.
It would not be so bad if USPTO were to do its bouncing promptly after the inventor declaration is filed. In that case, if indeed there were actually something wrong with the inventor declaration, it would be a realistic goal to round up a fresh signature from the inventor.
Instead, the USPTO waits until allowance to mail the “Notice Requiring Inventor’s Oath or Declaration” (Form PTOL-2306). The Notice states that there is some real or imagined defect in the inventor declaration that was filed back when the patent application was filed in the first place. In a very large percentage of cases, there is not actually anything wrong with the inventor declaration. Continue reading
Picking an authentication mechanism for ePCT
Starting just now, WIPO has made it possible to use two new authentication mechanisms for ePCT, in addition to the one authentication mechanism that has been available in the past. In this article I mention things that you might want to think about in picking an authentication mechanism to use. Continue reading