When the caveman first invented the wheel, he didn’t make a profit from it. The other cavemen probably thought he was a pretty neat guy, especially when they all started to copy it and their quality of life began to improve, but our Neanderthal ancestors didn’t have the complex financial marketplace and its opportunities that we have today.
Modern-day inventors can now make a profit from their creativity and ingenuity by protecting it from reproduction by their financial rivals. Patents in some shape or form are thought to have been around since 500BC and possibly before, giving inventors a limited time of exclusivity to capitalise on their innovation by making it illegal for anyone else to reproduce its likeness without a licence first, usually for around 20 years. But how do you protect your inventions internationally? Rather than protecting it separately in several countries, the Patent Cooperation Treaty can streamline the process and offer salve to the upfront costs of the process.
The agreement
The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) is an agreement between its 130-odd member countries that unifies the procedures and international protection for any type of intellectual property that are subject to patents. The main purpose of the PCT system is to provide a simple, unified patent application procedure for filing in multiple countries. The International Bureau of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) administers the PCT system.
To file an international PCT application, at least one applicant or inventor must be a national or resident of a country that has ratified the PCT. The application is submitted to a receiving office, of which Australia is one, and the International Bureau notifies all the PCT member countries. If the inventor chooses to proceed with applications for patents in other countries, the application will then be examined according to the national patent laws of each country to which he or she has applied. It is important to note that approval for a patent in one country does not guarantee approval in another.
The process
The entire application process can take up to 30 months, or just over two-and-a-half years, from the date of the first filing with the relevant receiving office. Applications can also be filed directly to WIPO in Geneva, Switzerland. A qualified patent attorney should be consulted regarding the best route for a particular product or invention’s application lodgement. It is not uncommon for applicants to file their own paperwork, but it is not advised given the complex nature of intellectual property laws.
There are two phases to obtaining a patent through the PCT system, the international phase and then the national phase. The first filing is known thereafter as the priority date from which, if your application is successful, you will be able to claim ownership of a patent over any rivals that may have lodged similar patents after the date.
The paperwork is submitted to the receiving office, which then checks the application for any basic mistakes, and assigns it a filing number. Six to eight weeks later, the receiving office then carries out an international search to ensure there aren’t any other inventions already protected that are too similar to grant the patent. The International Searching Authority then produces a report and a written opinion, a part of the process Tony Ward, chairman of principals and senior patent attorney at Griffith Hack, thinks is an excellent opportunity for inventors to refine their product.
“I would argue, as a patent attorney, that the more searches that are done on an invention, the better. At the end of the day, you get a robust patent that will stand the test of time. [Weak] patents are the ones that get litigated and the implications are just horrendous. People like strong patents because, generally speaking, they’re not litigated. People respect their strength and don’t infringe them.”
Once 18 months have passed since the priority date, the International Bureau publishes the application worldwide. The application must enter the national phase generally within 30 months from the priority date. For each individual country being applied to, it is vital to check for clarification on their regulations. The applicant must notify each office that the national phase is being entered in that country and the necessary national fees must be paid. The national offices will examine the application under their own domestic laws, possibly carry out a further international search of their own, and either grant or refuse a patent according to their own patent laws.
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