An international patent application, also referred to as a 'Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) patent application', is a single patent application which allows the applicant to continue a patent procedure in up to 153 jurisdictions to get patent protection for their invention.
It is advantageous for applicants to file such a single patent application and to use it as a starting point for a patent procedure in any PCT member state (today, 153 countries).
It is a further advantage of such an international patent application that the applicant has 30 or 31 months (depending on the country) - thus in general two-and-a-half years - to decide in which of the 153 countries it wishes to obtain patent protection for its invention by entering the patent application in each of the desired countries. Continue Reading