Webinar recording now available: Picking a Receiving Office

So you missed the CLE-accredited webinar about the Patent Cooperation Treaty that took place on Wednesday, November 17, 2021 entitled Picking a Receiving Office.  Well, all is not lost.  You can download the program materials here and you can view the video recording here.  It is unlikely you will ever find anyplace that offers a comparable 90 minutes of discussion of this fascinating topic.  As a reminder this recording is provided free of charge, courtesy of the World Intellectual Property Organization.   You might be able to view it directly in your web browser here:

Here is a description of the program.

Any would-be PCT applicant that has the ability to use the Patent Cooperation Treaty at all, always has at least two Receiving Offices to choose from.  Saying the same thing differently, there is never any situation where a PCT filer only has one Receiving Office available.

There are always some advantages and disadvantages to the various Receiving Offices.  It would be a big mistake if any patent practitioner were to assume that it is always the best to use some particular Receiving Office.  Even if there are many reasons why some particular RO is nearly always the best choice for a particular filer, it will always turn out that there are some specific situations where a different RO is a better choice.  The practitioner who fails to inform himself or herself about the factors that might prompt the selection of an RO that is different from one’s “usual” RO does so at his or her peril.

A PCT filer from the US always has at least two Receiving Offices to choose from, including:

  • The Receiving Office of the International Bureau (RO/IB)
  • The Receiving Office of the USPTO (RO/US)

What are the advantages and disadvantages of these two ROs?   What are aspects of a particular patent application that might make a big difference to an applicant in the applicant’s process of selecting an RO?

As a bonus topic we talk about ways that power users can use ePCT when filing in RO/US and in RO/IB, and we talk about ways to transfer funds to the IB.  

4 Replies to “Webinar recording now available: Picking a Receiving Office”

  1. Please could you post the URL to the “download materials” for this presentation? The embedded link to your video works, but not the one to the materials.

    Quickly looking at the video, I think that the URL was briefly posted there, but I now cannot find it again.

  2. Thank you for posting. When I first posted the URL for the materials I made I mistake. I have now corrected the URL. I will be grateful if you can try the URL again.

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