Nearly every industrialized country (with certain exceptions, e.g., Taiwan, any many Latin American, Middle Eastern, and African countries) is a signatory to the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), which defines a process for the filing, search, and examination of an “international” (or PCT) patent application.

A PCT application does not directly result in a patent.  Instead, it typically results in a search and a written examiner’s opinion of the patentability of the claimed concepts.

The search and opinion typically are received roughly 19 months from the priority date (the date of filing of the PCT, or of an earlier application from which the PCT application seeks to benefit).  The PCT application is then published at roughly 19 months from the priority date.

If examination is requested, an examiner’s report, which sometimes is more detailed than the written opinion, is usually received between 19 and 28 months from the priority date.  

By 30 or 31 months from the priority date, we submit a localized “National Stage” patent application to the national patent office of each client-desired country.

The PCT search results, written opinion, and examiner’s report can assist each corresponding national patent examiner with determining if a patent should and will be issued for that country, and when particularly positive, sometimes can inspire an examiner to not perform an additional search or a rigorous additional examination of the claims. Thus, some of the potential benefits of the PCT process are the opportunity to:

1. defer the decision to file a patent application in a PCT signatory country;
2. obtain a relatively quick search and patentability opinion for the claims;
3. obtain an examination report that sometimes will strongly influence at least some of the national patent examiners; and
4. all for a relatively modest government fee (considering the potential fees for early filing in a number of foreign patent offices).

The costs of filing “national” patent applications varies considerably from country to country, and is impacted substantially by whether a certified translation of the application is required by a given country (in other words, whether they will accept an English language application).

In some situations, if no delay and less than 4 countries are desired, it can be advantageous to file directly in those countries and skip the PCT process.  This decision should be discussed with us as early as possible.