Foreign Patent Filing and PCT Application
Intellectual Property, Patents, Patent Cooperation Treaty, Foreign Patents, Foreign Filing, Foreign Patent Filing.
Foreign Patent Filing and PCT Applications
I. Why to Foreign File?
Many people think that there is an all encompassing international patent;
unfortunately, there really is not. Your U.S. filed patent application is only good in the United States. Thus, in order to obtain foreign patent rights, you must file separately in each foreign country because the patent laws of each country are different. With that understood, Patent Cooperation Treaty applications (PCT) can be filed designating multiple foreign countries. This is discussed in further detail in section II below.
After Ksr - Stronger Patents Or Just Harder To Get?
A recent United States Supreme Court ruling is causing quite a stir in intellectual property circles. The case is KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., et al., 127 S. Ct. 1727 (2007).
Background
To obtain a patent, the invention must be useful, novel and non-obvious. See Patents. The first of these, utility, is present for nearly every invention. The second, novelty, generally requires that the invention claimed is not disclosed in full in a single reference (patents, published applications or any published document anywhere in the World), and the third, non-obviousness, generally requires that the invention as claimed is not fully disclosed in a combination of references. Previously, to reject a patent for obviousness though a combination of references required some suggestion or motivation in the references themselves (excluding the subject patent application) that would lead one skilled in the pertinent art to make the combination of their teachings.
Provisional Or Non-provisional Patent Application - Which Should You Choose?
A provisional patent application is not a patent, and furthermore, never becomes a patent, with the single rare exception noted below. It automatically expires after twelve months following the day of filing and cannot be revived.
It does provide a priority date for concurrent later-filed non-provisional applications for the content that is in the provisional. This means that references that could defeat the later-filed application as to the matter in the provisional (but which could not defeat the provisional filing date) will now not be utilized to defeat the later-filed application. Further, it does not subtract from the twenty year term of the later-filed application unless it is truly converted as discussed below.