PREFACEThe Patent Cooperation Treaty Since entering into force in 1978, the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) offers inventors and industry an advantageous route for obtaining patent protection internationally. By filing one “international” patent application under the PCT, protection of an invention can be sought simultaneously in each of a large number of countries. Both applicants and patent Offices of the 138 PCT Member States benefit from the uniform formality requirements, the international search and preliminary examination reports and from the centralized international publication provided by the PCT system. The national patent granting procedure and the related expenses are postponed, in the majority of cases, by up to 30 months from priority date (or even longer in the case of some Offices) as compared with the traditional patent system. At the end of this period, the applicant should have received important value-added information concerning the likelihood of obtaining patent protection.The graph below shows an overview of the main processing stages of patent applications within the international phase of the PCT system and their related timelines.
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