Posts Tagged: "PCT"

Under the Paris Route PPH pilot program, an Office of Second Filing (OSF) may utilize the search and examination results of a national application filed in the Office of First Filing (OFF) in a corresponding application filed under the Paris Convention in the OSF. The PCT-PPH pilot program will use positive international written opinions and international preliminary examination reports developed within the framework of the Patent Cooperation Treaty.

The appeal of the PCT process is that it enables patent applicants to file a single patent application and have that single, uniform patent application be treated as an initial application for patent in any Member Country. This single, uniform patent application is what is referred to as the international application. Filing an international patent application to start the patent process can frequently be a wise move if you are contemplating securing patent rights in multiple countries. It is, however, important to understand that obtaining international patent protection is not cheap. It is also important to understand that the international patent application you file will not mature into an international patent.

Notwithstanding the inherent unreliability of legislative history and the truly scary prospect of trying to get inside the head of Members of Congress, it seems fairly clear to me that the America Invents Act, which was signed into law by President Obama on September 16, 2012, contains at least a handful of things that can only be characterized as unintended consequences. Among them are: (1) U.S. patents issued from foreign filings will be prior art as of the foreign filing date; (2) commonly owned patent applications cannot be used against each other for novelty purposes; and (3) the creation of an post grant challenge limbo because of the delay in initiating post-grant review procedures.

A PCT application doesn’t automatically lead to global patent protection. Instead, you eventually need to apply for patents in each of the countries and regions where you wish to pursue patent protection. This involves filing separate applications at the “national stage”, which occurs 30 months (31 months in some countries) after the priority application’s filing date.

Hardly a month passes without there being yet another Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) announcement from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The PPH is lauded by the USPTO with great frequency, and for good reason. But what exactly is the PPH and how do you use it to your benefit? Through the end of June 2011 there have been only 6,657 PPH requests, with upwards of 40,000 registered and practicing patent attorneys or agents in the United States, which means there is not a lot of collective experience with the PPH despite the obvious advantages.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has just announced the expansion of the PCT-PPH pilot program with the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), as well as two new PPH pilot programs; a new pilot project for the Patent Prosecution Highway with the Nordic Patent Institute (NPI) based on NPI’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) work products and a new pilot project for the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) with the Israel Patent Office (ILPO).

PPH will permit each office to benefit from the PCT work previously done by the other office, which reduces the examination workload and improves patent quality. The expedited examination in each office allows applicants to obtain corresponding patents faster and more efficiently in each country. The PCT-PPH program will use international written opinions and international preliminary examination reports developed within the framework of the Patent Cooperation Treaty.

In this edition of News, Notes & Announcements, the USPTO announces it has signed an agreement with the Russian Patent Office to act as an International Searching Authority; the USPTO announces expansion of the Patent Prosecution Highway; PLI’s Patent Litigation 2010 starts next week and will travel across the US with stops in Virigina, Atlanta, Chicago and New York; BIO is hosting a Technology Transfer Symposium next week in San Francisco; Howard University will hold an IP Empowerment Summit on November 5, 2010, aimed at trying to help indigent inventors — USPTO Director David Kappos will participate; and BlackWeb Technologies sues two computer giants — IBM and HP — on patents covering methods for transmitting information between a remote network and a local computer.

All in all I would characterize the mood of the PTO officials I spoke with as up-beat and the mood of the stakeholders in attendance was generally positive, but with reservations about the mechanics of Track 3. After the event I too would be upbeat if I were among the senior ranks at the USPTO. Those aspects that were viewed as negative or needing more work or clarification seemed few, were identified over and over again and should be addressable. That being the case it seems the majority of the proposal is acceptable and the community remains hungry for these types of creative initiatives, which sadly is all we have given that Congress continues to be AWOL on even relatively meaningless reforms, let alone reforms that could actually do some real good.

Yesterday I had the honor of spending 30 minutes interviewing Francis Gurry, the Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The Director General spoke substantively about issues facing the Patent Offices of the world, as well as some possible solutions. Gurry also discusses harmonization attempts, work-sharing agreements and the crushing worldwide backlog of patent applications that could lead to irrelevance of the system. As you read the interview you will also see that he thinks it is possible that the rest of the world will adopt a US-like grace period.

Last month a two-day international symposium sponsored by WIPO concluded with broad agreement on the need to pool efforts at the international level to address the problem of backlogs in patent applications at patent offices around the world.  In 2007, the last year for which complete worldwide statistics are available, unprocessed patent applications around the world reached 4.2 million, and…

It is no longer news that the United States Patent Office is hopelessly behind, and many inventors and the companies they work for are waiting extraordinary periods of time to even get a patent examiner to pick up their patent applications for a substantive review. This has caused many inventors to indefinitely have their dreams, hopes and aspirations put on…

Many of the patent owners, their IP departments and patent attorneys we speak to are under budget pressure. This is especially the case in the essential – but relatively high-cost – area of international patent protection. A recession might last a year or two, but patents last for twenty years. It’s therefore a delicate balancing act to reduce costs whilst…

International patent filings under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) grew by 2.4% in 2008, to nearly 164,000 applications, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).  While the rate of growth was not as high as it was during the previous three years, when the average growth rater of applications was 9.3%, the total number of PCT applications filed during 2008 represents the highest…