A PCT patent application is a Patent Cooperation Treaty patent application. The Patent Cooperation Treaty is the international treaty that defines the patent rights granted between the contracting states. Presently, with few exceptions, nearly all industrialized nations are signatories to the PCT. The PCT patent application is a single application filed at one of the international receiving offices (of which the USPTO is one) that grants the applicant the right to file future national patent applications in any of the contracting states. It is commonly referred to as an international patent application.
A PCT patent application is similar to a provisional patent application in that it secures a priority date from which additional applications may be filed, but does not itself mature into a patent. At its most basic, a PCT patent application functions as a placeholder in time allowing you to postpone the expense of filing individual national patent applications in each of the countries for which you want to pursue protection. By filing a PCT patent application you incur a single initial filing fee (currently approximately three thousand dollars), but postpone all of the additional expenses of the national patent process for approximately 30 months from the application’s priority date. This gives the patentee time to assess the value of the invention and analyze the potential markets throughout the world before making more significant investments in international patent protection.
Multinational corporations rarely have difficulty in determining whether or not to file a PCT patent application. If the product(s) covered by the patent will be sold and used in international markets, then international protection will likely be pursued. Conversely, local businesses that do not have an international presence don’t have international market share to protect and will likely not pursue protection. The difficult decisions often fall on the start-up, the entrepreneur and the expanding businesses. For them, international protection may be of little value today, but it may be exceptionally valuable down the road. For example, an entrepreneur looking to license or sell his invention may limit his market of buyers if the invention cannot be protected outside of the US. Similarly, the start-up or the expanding business may lose out on an opportunity to capitalize on their innovation in new markets if they do not secure their rights.
There are times in which filing a PCT patent application may add an unwanted layer of expense and delay in your overall patent strategy, but for many situations filing a PCT patent application is a great opportunity to secure your rights internationally while postponing significant monetary investment. I can help you determine your best course of action and help you analyze the costs and benefits of filing a PCT patent application for your invention.