PCT Newsletter 10/2006: Practical Advice

WARNING: Although the information which follows was correct at the time of original publication in the PCT Newsletter, some information may no longer be applicable; for example, amendments may have been made to the PCT Regulations and Administrative Instructions, as well as to PCT Forms, since the PCT Newsletter concerned was published; changes to certain fees and references to certain publications may no longer be valid. Wherever there is a reference to a PCT Rule, please check carefully whether the Rule in force at the date of publication of the advice has since been amended.

Information for third parties on entry into the national phase

Q: I am interested in finding out the countries in which international applications filed by my company’s competitors have entered the national phase. Does WIPO make such information available to the public?

A: Although the PCT does not specifically require that applicants or national or regional Offices (henceforth “national Offices”) inform WIPO about the status of specific international applications in the national phase, such information is now available on the WIPO website whenever the national Offices concerned have furnished the necessary information. Information on whether an international application has entered the national phase as well as other information relating to the national phase can, where available, be accessed via the PatentScope database (“search international applications”) (www.wipo.int/pctdb). This can be done by clicking the tab “national phase” when viewing the data regarding the international application concerned. There are, at the time of writing, 1,049,156 national phase entry records, as well as status information for 458,625 PCT applications available via the PatentScope database, and it is expected that such information will become increasingly available in the coming months, as an increasing number of national Offices cooperate with WIPO in this way.

Where information is displayed for an Office, this indicates that the applicant has requested national phase processing for the application concerned in that Office. The national phase entry date and national reference number are supplied by the national Office concerned, and can be used to retrieve further details from that Office, if desired. Where available, status information such as patent grant, withdrawal or refusal is also published. In the case of the Offices of Australia, Canada and the Republic of Korea, Internet hyperlinks are available that direct the user from PatentScope to the online databases of those offices, where additional status information and national language translations can be found. For example, if you click on the link to the Canadian database, you may be able to obtain the English translation of an international application which was published in German.

Note that information on the national phase is only available where WIPO has received the relevant information, either directly from national Offices or via the INPADOC database, and, in most cases, is available only after 30 months from the priority date, which is about 12 months after international publication. Currently, the 24 countries listed below have furnished data relating to the national phase:

• Australia

• Austria

• Belize

• Bulgaria

• Canada

• China

• Georgia

• Germany

• Israel

• Japan

• Kenya

• Latvia
• Lithuania
• Mexico
• New Zealand
• Republic of Korea
• Romania
• Russian Federation
• Slovakia
• Slovenia
• Spain
• Turkey
• United Kingdom
• Uzbekistan

The timeliness of the available information varies according to the Office supplying the data. A detailed table of dates covered for each Office is available by clicking on “more information” from the National Phase tab described above, or at the following address:

WIPO has invited all Offices to submit, on a regular basis, national phase information to it, in the hope that eventually, information on all national phase entries will be available. It is important to note that, due to the fact that information is, for the time being, updated at different frequencies depending on the Office, absence of information for a given Office does not necessarily indicate non-entry into the national phase before that Office, and we suggest that you contact the national Office concerned to be sure that you have the most up-to-date information.

If a country does not appear in the above list of countries, applicants may, of course, contact the national Office concerned for information about the status of a particular international application, noting that some national Offices make status information available online, for example:

The WIPO website contains links to the websites of other industrial property offices around the world (see: www.wipo.int/ipdl/en/resources/links.jsp).