Category: PCT

Djibouti has joined the PCT.  This brings the number of members to 150.  You can read about this here.  Djibouti deposited its Instrument of Accession with WIPO on June 23, 2016.  As a consequence, any PCT application filed on or after September 23, 2016 will automatically designate Djibouti.

The two-letter code for Djibouti is DJ.

Seeing the total now at 150 makes me think back to when I filed my first PCT application, in about 1986.  At that point the PCT was about eight years old, and the number of member states was about forty.  This graph shows the number of member states.

 

The 20th annual AIPLA PCT Seminar is now open for registration.

This will be Monday and Tuesday, July 25 and 26, in Alexandria, Virginia.

As a reminder the AIPLA PCT Seminar is different from other PCT Seminars in many ways.  One way that it is different is that it offers not only patent office speakers but also practitioners.  There are speakers from Europe and from China who will talk about using the PCT to get protection in EPO and in China.

Yours truly is one of the speakers.

For more information, or to sign up, or to book a hotel room at the seminar hotel, click here.

Kuwait has joined the PCT.  Here you see Ambassador Jamal M. I. Al-Ghunaim and Director General Francis Gurry at the ceremony which took place June 9.  
[photo credit:  WIPO]

This brings the number of PCT members to 149. Continue reading “Kuwait joins the PCT”

The other day I stumbled quite by chance upon yet another nice thing about ePCT.  In this blog article I will describe the nice thing.  And the alert reader might be able to win a prize. Continue reading “Yet another nice thing about ePCT”

Yours truly will speak at the Spring CLE program of the Tennessee Intellectual Property Law Association, on Friday, May 6 in Nashville, Tennessee.  You can see the brochure here.  I will lecture on best practices for use of the Patent Cooperation Treaty.  I look forward to seeing lots of Tennessee patent practitioners at this program.

Until now a US filer of a PCT application had the ability to choose from any of a list of seven International Searching Authorities — ISA/US (the USPTO’s contractors), ISA/EP (the European Patent Office), ISA/KR (the Korean patent office), ISA/AU (the Australian patent office), ISA/RU (the Russian patent office), ISA/IL (the Israeli patent office), and ISA/JP (the Japanese Patent Office).  Starting a week from now, on April 1, 2016, US filers will be able to choose from a longer list of eight International Searching Authorities.

Continue reading “US PCT filers get yet another option for International Searching Authority”

Most PCT filers know that there are always a minimum of two Receiving Offices (and sometimes more than two) available to any PCT applicant that is entitled to use the Patent Cooperation Treaty.  For example for a US-based PCT applicant, the ROs available are (at a minimum) at least RO/US and RO/IB.  And most PCT filers also know that there can sometimes be very good reasons to use RO/IB rather than RO/US.  Indeed there are some fact situations where it is tantamount to malpractice to fail to use RO/IB rather than RO/US.

Given all of this, it is very important to keep in mind that for the next two weeks, the drop-dead time of day for filing in the RO/IB will be different than it is for most of the year.

Normally the drop-dead time of day for filing in the RO/IB is 4:00 PM (for filers in the Mountain Time Zone).  That is, the time in Switzerland is eight hours different from the time in Denver.

But for the next two weeks, the drop-dead time of day for filing in the RO/IB will be 5:00 PM (for filers in the Mountain Time Zone).  Said differently, for the next two weeks you could file in the RO/IB an hour later than usual and still receive a same-day filing date.

Both of the EFS-Web servers (the main one and the “contingency” one) are crashed, and have been crashed since December 22.  This means that if you are going to file a PCT application in RO/US, you are stuck doing it by hand-carrying it on paper to the USPTO or running a paper application down to the post office.

So what’s the smart way to file your PCT application just now?

I am indebted to alert reader Rick Neifeld who reminded me that the smart way is to file in RO/IB.  And the smart way to file in RO/IB is of course to do it by means of ePCT.

The only thing to watch out for is the Foreign Filing License (FFL) situation.  You need to make sure either to already have an FFL or not need one.

The way to not need an FFL is to have an invention that was not made in the US.

The easy way to already have an FFL is to have filed a priority application in the USPTO more than six months in the past (so that you will have received an automatic FFL just because six months passed).  Or check your filing receipt on the priority application and hopefully it will say that you have an express FFL.