Posts Tagged ‘PCT’

Priority – Article 4A of the Paris Convention

(1) Any person who has duly filed an application for a patent, or for the registration of a utility model, or of an industrial design, or of a trademark, in one of the countries of the Union, or his successor in title, shall enjoy, for the purpose of filing in the other countries, a right of priority during the periods hereinafter fixed.

(2) Any filing that is equivalent to a regular national filing under the domestic legislation of any country of the Union or under bilateral or multilateral treaties concluded between countries of the Union shall be recognized as giving rise to the right of priority.

On June 9, 2010, the UK Court of Appeal successfully avoided ruling on a 2009 decision by the England and Wales High Court (Patent Court) confirming the decision of the Board of Appeals of the EPO in case No. T 0788/05[1] which held that priority can only be claimed by the identical applicant(s) of the relevant earlier application or his valid successor in title[2].

Well, it is not a patent – there is no such thing as a “granted international patent.”  In reality, “PCT” has two meanings. To begin with, it is the official acronym for Patent Cooperation Treaty, which is a binding agreement between numerous countries to cooperate in the action of protecting inventions. However, PCT is also patentspeak for the application that gets filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty as well as its processes.

Say what? I can imagine the confusion generated by that sentence from here.  🙂