There is no such thing as an international patent
A patent is awarded by the government of a country and is valid only within its territorial boundaries. To obtain a patent that is valid in a particular country, a request must be made in that country's patent office.
The confusion and misunderstanding about "international patents" arises sometimes from the process of pursuing patents through the Patent Cooperation Treaty, or the PCT. The PCT is an organisation that provides a unified patent filing procedure for 137 different contracting states (e.g. countries). A PCT application is a "placeholder" application for national filings in individual countries, and is often referred to as an "international application". However, such "international applications" do not ever become "international patents".
When looking at a PCT application, many people erroneously conclude that it is an application for a patent that will be valid in multiple countries. Indeed on the front page of a PCT application in the upper right corner there is a heading titled "Designated states" followed by a list of two letter codes. Each of those codes stands for a country (e.g., AU, Australia; CA, Canada; CN, China, and so on). There can be as many as about 110 countries listed. However, this list does not mean that the application is a patent, or even will become a patent, in all of these countries.
OK then, what does this list mean? Through an international treaty (Paris Convention Treaty), a group of countries agreed to not discriminate against each other by affording patent applicants in these countries a one-year period in which to file an application in one of the other countries without losing the benefit of their filing date. The advantage is that any "art" that became known after the original filing date in the home country but before the filing date in another country could not be cited against the application. Thus, for example, if you originally file an application for your invention in Canada, you could wait up to one year before filing the application in Mexico. This would give you time to see if the costs of filing in other countries is justified.
Later, a second treaty (the PCT) established another route to delay the additional filings in other countries. In this method, an international office was set up (World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO)) to receive and process the applications. But now, the applicant has one year to file at the WIPO office and by designating member countries she preserves her rights and original filing date in those designated countries without having to go to the expense of actually filing in each country. This saves an enormous amount of money! Eventually to obtain a patent in these countries, the application does need to be filed in the national patent offices (the process is called "conversion"), pay fees, have translations done and comply with the regulations of each individual office. Depending on some procedural issues and fee payments, the applicant has either 20 months or 30 months from the original filing date (the date the application was filed in the home country) to file in each of these other countries. Given the costs, most applications are filed in a few other countries at most.
The information contained in this page was believed to be correct at the time it was collated. New patents and patent applications, altered status of patents, and case law may have resulted in changes in the landscape. CAMBIA makes no warranty that it is correct or up to date at this time and accepts no liability for any use that might be made of it. Corrections or updates to the information are welcome. Please send an email to info@bios.net.
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