For those filing at WIPO, a time zone change

The US and Europe do not agree on when to start and when to stop Daylight Saving Time.  The US started DST on March 9, 2014, and Europe started DST today, March 30.  This is important for US filers who file things at WIPO.

Perhaps the most common situation in which a US filer files something at WIPO is the e-filing of a PCT application in RO/IB.  Another example would be the filing of an international design application (Hague Agreement application) at the IB.  Yet another example is the filing of a PCT Demand through ePCT (which has many advantages over filing such a PCT Demand directly with a foreign International Preliminary Examining Authority).

In any of these situations the filer will want to keep track of when midnight will come in Switzerland.

For most of each year, the offset is predictable.  In our firm we have a clock on the wall labeled “WIPO” that says what time it is in Switzerland.  Its time is usually eight hours different from local time.  For example when it is 4PM (I am trying to learn Mandarin;  click here to hear me try to say this in Mandarin) in Colorado it is midnight in Switzerland.  In other words when we are rushing to get something e-filed at WIPO, we are rushing to get it e-filed by 4PM.

On the East Coast it is 6PM and on the West Coast it is 3PM.

But as of three weeks ago, we had an extra hour.  So long as we got it filed by 5PM (click here), it was still a same-day filing at WIPO.

The important thing is that now today it is back to the usual 4PM.

Note that in WIPO’s ePCT system, there is a prominent place where it tells the filer what time it is in Switzerland.  So you can always check there to make sure you know when you need to do your filing.

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