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Drugs@FDA Glossary of Terms

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abajournal.com (IP Law, Top 100)

The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) is an international agreement for filing patent applications having effect in many countries around the world. Although the PCT system does not provide for the grant of “an international patent”, the system simplifies the process of filing patent applications, delays the expenses associated with applying for patent protection in foreign countries, and allows the inventor more time to assess the commercial viability of his/her invention. Under the PCT, an inventor can file a single international patent application in one language with one patent office in order to simultaneously seek protection for an invention in the PCT member countries (source: USPTO Inventor Resources).

PCT Links:
WIPO PCT Resources
About the PCT
PCT Articles (html, pdf)
PCT Rules (html, pdf)
PCT Treaty, Regulations, and Administrative Instructions
General FAQs on Patents from WIPO
PCT Applicant’s Guide
Types of Protection Available via the PCT in PCT Contracting States
WIPO Standard Two Letter Country Codes
Time Limits for Entering National/Regional Phase under PCT Chapters I and II
Effects of modification of PCT Article 22(1) time limit
PCT Contracting States for which a Regional Patent can be Obtained via the PCT
PCT Fee Tables by Countries/Offices
PCT Fees in US Dollars
Official Notices (PCT Gazette) Collection
PCT Newsletter
PCT Time Limit Calculator
USPTO PCT Office including Forms, Fees, and Information
European Patent Office (EPO)
Filing an application in the EPO
MPEP Chapter 1800 Patent Cooperation Treaty (html, pdf)

Searching:
PatentScope Search - International Patent Applications Search
esp@cenet - EP and WIPO Patent Search

Phone Numbers:
The USPTO PCT Help Desk, which provides information and assistance on the PCT process, may be reached by telephone at (571) 272-4300 between the hours of 9:00 am and 4:30 pm (EST/EDT), Monday through Friday or by facsimile (FAX) at (571) 273-0419 twenty-four hours a day.

There are four basic requirements for patentability under the European Patent Convention (EPC): 1) there must be an “invention”; 2) the invention must be “susceptible of industrial application”; 3) the invention must be “new”; and 4) the invention must involve an “inventive step” (Article 52).

Many people who have confidence in their knowledge of U.S. patent law run into problems when applying for European patents because they disclose their invention before filing either a U.S. or European patent application. While this may be acceptable (with certain limitations) in the U.S., it can create insurmountable problems in many other countries.

In order to understand why, you must understand the third requirement of patentability under the EPC - the “new” requirement.

According to Article 54(1) of the EPC, an invention is considered to be new if it does not form part of the state of the art. Article 54(2) goes on to define “state of the art” as everything made available to the public, whether written, oral, in use, or any other way before the date of filing of the European patent application.

So, any public disclosure before the filing date of your invention, including writing about your invention on your blog, or using your invention as part of your newly launched website, can result in loss of international patent rights. The only situations where public disclosure is not taken into consideration is if the public disclosure was made within six months of the filing of the European patent application, and was the result of some sort of abuse, such as a breach of confidence, or if it was made at a recognized international exhibition (Article 55).

Since the EPO only searches printed publications during examination, an oral disclosure is unlikely to affect the grant of a patent. However, the oral disclosure could be used by others after grant, for example, during an EPO opposition proceeding or national revocation proceeding.

Therefore, those considering filing international patent applications should be extremely careful about any public disclosure and, preferably, seek the advice of qualified patent counsel.

Links: European Patent Convention, Article 54, Article 55, Guidelines for Examination in the European Patent Office (Patentability: General, Non-prejudicial disclosures; Guidelines for opposition procedure), EPC Part V - Opposition Procedure.

A list of two-letter codes accepted for use in indicating States, other entities, and intergovernmental organizations in documents relating to international applications under the PCT. The list is part of WIPO Standard ST.3.

Links: USPTO List of Country Codes, PCT Applicant’s Guide.

Delphion has a nice glossary of patent terms.

Link: Glossary of Patent Terms.

You can now search patents with Google. Google Patent Search covers the entire collection of patents made available by the USPTO, from patents issued in the 1790s through those issued in the middle of 2006.

Links: Google Patent Search (via lifehacker)

Senior officials of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, as well as a representative from the Patent and Trademark Depository Library Program, will be available live on-line on Thursday, November 16 , from 2 to 3 pm (ET). They will be answering questions and offering tips for independent inventors. Instructions for taking part in the chat will be posted on the home page of the USPTO website at 10:30 am (ET) on Thursday. Inventors can begin logging on at 1:30 pm.

Links: transcripts and index from previous on-line chats.

Some sites to search non-patent prior art:

CiteSeer
IBM Research
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Scirus

Search for final decisions rendered by the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) here. The USPTO Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) page can be found here.

Links: BPAI Search, USPTO FOIA page.

Web 2.0 + Patents = Patents 2.0? The Peer to Patent Project aims to design and pilot an online system for peer review of patents. Established in conjunction with the USPTO, and sponsored by IBM, this program will encourage communities to review pending patent applications and to provide feedback to the patent office on existing prior art that may not have been discovered by the applicant or examiner.

“By using social software, such as social reputation, collaborative filtering and information visualization tools, we can apply the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ – or, more accurately the wisdom of the experts – to complex social and scientific problems. This could make it easier to protect the inventor’s investment while safeguarding the marketplace of ideas.”

Links: The Peer to Patent Project, Project Wiki, Project Blog.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) is posting oral arguments in mp3 format. All future argued cases will be available twenty-four hours after argument is completed.

The CAFC has nationwide jurisdiction in a variety of subject areas, including international trade, government contracts, patents, trademarks, certain money claims against the United States government, federal personnel, and veterans’ benefits.

If you would like to browse all cases, simply enter the letter “v” in the Caption field of the search page and click on “Search”.

Links: Oral Arguments MP3s, CAFC.

The USPTO’s pdf based Electronic Filing System (EFS-Web) will go live on March 17. EFS-Web promises to greatly simplify and streamline the filing of patent applications, enabling applicants to file documents as pdf files twenty-four hours a day.

Links: EFS-Web help.

Senior officials of the United States Patent and Trademark Office will be available live on-line on Wednesday, February 22, from 2 to 3 pm (ET). They will be answering questions and offering tips for independent inventors. Instructions for taking part in the on-line chat will be posted on the home page of the USPTO website at 10:30 am (ET) on Wednesday. Inventors can begin logging on at 1:30 pm.

Links: transcripts and index from previous on-line chats.

The Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP) Eighth Edition, Revision 4 has been released. The Manual is published to provide U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patent examiners, applicants, attorneys, agents, and representatives of applicants with a reference work on the practices and procedures relative to the prosecution of patent applications before the USPTO.

This revision incorporates the changes necessitated by the final rule “Changes To Implement the Cooperative Research and Technology Enhancement Act of 2004,” which became effective on September 14, 2005. Chapter 2300 has been rewritten to incorporate the new Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences rules that became effective on September 13, 2004. The rules directed to interferences are in Part 41, Subparts D and E of title 37, Code of Federal Regulations.

Websites such as shouldexist.org enable users to publish their inventive ideas and collaborate with others to refine and develop their inventions. Users may donate their time and money to the website and to specific projects. Of particular interest is that all discussions and projects are documented, dated, published on-line, and publicly available; this, and any other on-line publication, is considered prior art (MPEP 901.06, 2128 ). While it is unlikely that any patent office, patent attorney, or professional prior art searcher is currently searching this and similar websites, such sites should be searched prior to and during the drafting of any patent application. The public disclosures on sites such as shouldexist.org may also prove valuable in questioning the validity of patents during reexaminations and patent infringement proceedings.

Links: shouldexist.org, halfbakery.com, idea-a-day.com, brightidea.com, creativitypool.com, Idea Banks on dmoz.org, thinkcycle.org, globalideasbank.org.

FreePatentsOnline.com is a free site for searching US Patents, US Published Applications, and European Patents. The search engine uses a syntax similar to the USPTO search site and adds powerful extensions such as word stemming, proximity searching, and search term weighting.