US jurisdiction report: The valuable Patent Cooperation Treaty

Nine months ago, with the help of a patent agent, the firm prepared and filed a US provisional patent application covering the invention. They barely have enough money to complete a working prototype of their invention, so separately filing a new non-provisional patent application and filing in foreign countries is financially out of reach for them.

They understand that the non-provisional patent application will need to be filed within three months, the one-year anniversary of the filing date of the provisional application, which is the deadline for doing so given that the provisional application will then expire.

They also understand that in order to enjoy the effective filing date of their provisional application, they must do a foreign filing by that same anniversary date. Having been told that there is no such thing as a “world patent”, whereby an inventor can with a single filing protect his invention throughout the world, they worry that they face losing foreign protection.

The solution

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if an inventor could with a single international filing simultaneously seek protection for an invention in most countries of the world? In fact there is such a procedure under what is called the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).

Concluded in 1970 and effective January 24, 1978, the PCT is an international patent law treaty that provides a unified procedure for filing patent applications that protect inventions in more than 150 contracting states.