Would you like to attend a free-of-charge two-day advanced course on the Patent Cooperation Treaty? Here is your opportunity. This series of fifteen lectures on the PCT is available free of charge. You can watch these lectures from anywhere in the world, at whatever hour of the day or night is convenient for you. You can watch these lectures on your computer, on your smart phone, or on a tablet. You could project the lectures onto a big screen in a conference room and watch the lectures as a group activity.
Filing at the International Bureau and Daylight Saving Time
It’s that time of year again. The time of year when it is important to keep track of the fact that Daylight Saving Time is different in Switzerland from the way it is in the United States. This is important because you might be in the US, and you might be e-filing some document with the International Bureau of WIPO. For the next two weeks (until March 27), the drop-dead time for e-filing a document at the IB is an hour later than usual. Usually, to get a same-day filing date at the IB, an American filer would have to complete the e-filing by 4PM Mountain Time (which is midnight in Geneva). But for the next two weeks, you get an extra hour. You could complete the e-filing by as late as 5PM Mountain Time and it would still be a same-day filing date.
This might affect you because you are e-filing a PCT patent application at RO/IB. This might affect you because you are e-filing a Hague Agreement design application at the IB. This might affect you because you are paying a set of Madrid Protocol renewal fees at the IB. Or maybe you are filing an Article 19 amendment or a Demand at the IB.
Most readers of my blog will appreciate that the correct terminology is not “Daylight Savings Time” but “Daylight Saving Time”.
Many readers will also appreciate that EU has been trying and trying to bring this to an end. There have also been largely feckless efforts in various states of the US to bring an end to this clock-changing. I personally would like it if the place where I am located, and the places where patent and trademark offices are that I care about, would all bring an end to clock-changing.
Which Searching Authorities charge the most for bad sequence listings?
(Corrected “ISA/IB” typo to “ISA/IN” thanks to an alert commenter, see below.)
When you file a PCT application that contains a genetic sequence or an amino acid sequence, you are supposed to provide it in a particular computer-readable format. This makes sense, of course. For one thing, the various patent offices around the world want to load such sequence listings into searchable databases. The idea is to facilitate searching so that if later somebody tries to get a patent on some sequence, and if the sequence is not novel, the lack of novelty can be quickly ascertained. A second reason for this is that if the PCT application tries to claim a sequence, the International Searching Authority can readily carry out a novelty search of that claimed sequence.
But what happens if the PCT applicant fails to provide the sequence in the computer-readable format? Or what happens if the PCT applicant purports to provide the sequence in the computer-readable format, but the data file is not formatted correctly? In such cases, the International Searching Authority is permitted to impose a Late Furnishing Fee.
Which raises the question — which ISAs charge the most? Which ISAs charge the least? Continue reading “Which Searching Authorities charge the most for bad sequence listings?”
Questions and answers that were left over from the first four sessions of the SLW webinar series
Hello readers. As most of you know, the Schwegman firm and the SLW Institute are hosting a remarkable fifteen-webinar series that make up a comprehensive Patent Cooperation Treaty training program. The first four sessions have taken place, and there are eleven more sessions to go. It is not to late to join — click here.
During the webinars, the attendees type in questions. I tried to answer some of the questions, but with 750 or more attendees, the number of questions was so great that I was not able to get to all of the questions during the scheduled time. I have collected the leftover questions from the first four sessions, and have tried to answer as many as I can make sense of, in this blog article. Happy reading! Continue reading “Questions and answers that were left over from the first four sessions of the SLW webinar series”
Upcoming ePCT webinars (not the same as upcoming PCT webinars)
Update: the webinars are now imminent. See a followup article.
Hello dear ePCT enthusiasts! Here are fifteen upcoming webinars that I will be presenting in the next few months on ePCT topics. Note that this is not the same as the upcoming fifteen webinars about PCT. This is fifteen upcoming webinars about ePCT. Note the “e”. Continue reading “Upcoming ePCT webinars (not the same as upcoming PCT webinars)”
More than one thousand six hundred signups for the PCT webinar series
I am astonished (in a good way) to see that just a few minutes ago we surpassed 1600 registrations for the Schwegman Lundberg Woessner 2022 Virtual PCT Training Seminar. This Seminar is a series of fifteen webinars that will commence two days from now, on Tuesday, February 8, 2022. Continue reading “More than one thousand six hundred signups for the PCT webinar series”
Learn about 92bis changes
Sign up to attend a webinar on February 10, 2022, at 3 p.m. (Central European Time) about Best practices for recording of changes (Rule 92bis).
The speakers will be:
- Matthias Reischle-Park, Deputy Director, PCT Legal and User Relations Division
- Mineko Mohri, Legal Officer, PCT Legal and User Support Section, PCT Legal and User Relations Division
To register, click here.
Welcome developments with DAS – Canada
This is a busy time for good news about DAS. One piece of good news about DAS is that the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) became a Depositing Office in DAS for patent applications on February 1, 2022.
CIPO was already a Depositing Office for national industrial design applications. There are actually two distinct pieces of good news about this development on February 1, 2022:
- CIPO became a Depositing Office for national patent applications
- RO/CA became a Depositing Office for PCT patent applications.
Welcome developments with DAS – Ireland
This is a busy time for good news about DAS. One piece of good news about DAS is that the Intellectual Property Office of Ireland will become an Accessing Office in DAS on February 17, 2022. It will participate as an Accessing Office with respect to the following:
- National industrial design applications
- National patent applications
- National trademark applications
- National utility model applications
- PCT international applications
Who should attend the SLW Institute 2022 Virtual PCT Training Seminar?
By now I am astonished (in a good way) to see that more than 1300 people have registered so far for this series of fifteen webinars about the Patent Cooperation Treaty, a series that will commence on Tuesday, February 8, 2022.
My first topic for this blog article are a couple of related questions about this webinar series that came in the other day from a first loyal reader. He asked:
Is this geared more towards attorneys (i.e., strategic considerations) or paralegals (e.g., filing requirements)? If for attorneys, is it for newer attorneys not familiar with the PCT, or would someone with 25+ years of experience benefit?
A second topic for this blog article is a question that came in from a second loyal reader located outside of the US. She asked:
Will your presentations be focused on considerations that apply only to US practice and options and choices available only to US applicants? Can you let me know which portions to skip if they will not be of interest to me as a non-US filer?
These are all really good questions. I will try to answer these questions as best I can in this blog article. Continue reading “Who should attend the SLW Institute 2022 Virtual PCT Training Seminar?”