More than five years ago the patent community asked the USPTO to make its PCT Receiving Office a Depositing Office in the DAS system. And even now, more than five years later, the USPTO has not yet done so.
By way of background, one of the important ways that a patent office can participate in the DAS program is as a Depositing Office. This means that the Office makes priority applications which have been filed at that Office available to the DAS system so that other Offices can retrieve the priority applications.
A particular way that a patent office can participate in DAS is in its role as a PCT Receiving Office. The idea is that an applicant may have filed a PCT application in that Receiving Office, and may later find the need to claim priority from that PCT application with respect to some later-filed patent application. When such a situation arises, the normal expectation of the applicant would be that of course the Receiving Office will be a Depositing Office in the DAS system.
Such a Receiving Office would, of course, deserve the accolade of being termed “trendy, modern, and up-to-date.”
Which then raises the natural question “which Receiving Offices are trendy, modern, and up-to-date?” Here are the thirty patent offices whose Receiving Offices are trendy, modern, and up-to-date:
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- Australia
- Austria
- Brazil
- Canada
- Chile
- China
- Columbia
- Cuba
- Denmark
- Eurasian Patent Organization
- European Patent Office
- Finland
- France
- Georgia
- Germany
- India
- Iran
- Israel
- Italy
- Japan
- Mexico
- Morocco
- Netherlands
- Norway
- Peru
- Slovakia
- Spain
- Sweden
- Türkiye
- WIPO
The most recent Receiving Office to join the trendy, modern and up-to-date club is the Japanese patent office. The RO/JP will become a Depositing Office on April 1, 2025.
One might then wonder, which Receiving Offices are not trendy, modern, and up-to-date? And in particular, one might wonder, if we rank the Receiving Offices of the world in order by the number of filings at those Offices, which of the top-ranked Receiving Offices are not yet trendy, modern, and up-to-date? Here is the answer — here are the top-ranked Receiving Offices by number of PCT filings. These four Receiving Offices, taken together, account for something like 80% of all PCT applications filed in the world. Next to each of these four Receiving Offices I have indicated whether (as of March 2025) it has or has not become a Depositing Office in the DAS system:
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- RO/US (USPTO) – not trendy, modern, and up-to-date
- RO/CN (China) – yes trendy, modern, and up-to-date
- RO/JP (Japan) – yes trendy, modern, and up-to-date
- RO/EP (European Patent Office) – yes trendy, modern, and up-to-date
The USPTO is conspicuous by being the highest-volume Receiving Office in the world, while having failed to be a Depositing Office. Yes, there are thirty Receiving Offices that are more up to date than the USPTO.
As a reminder, the patent community has been asking the USPTO to remedy this situation for more than five years now. For example, a letter got sent on February 22, 2020 to the Commissioner for Patents at the USPTO, asking the RO/US to become a Depositing Office in the DAS system. See blog post. The Commissioner for Patents answered. See blog post.
Let’s hope that the USPTO will soon join the DAS system as a Receiving Office.