Govt extends assistance to inventors

THE Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (Ipophl) has extended until December 31, 2021 its Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) Filing Assistance Program to benefit more inventors exploring opportunities in global markets.

“As we encourage our inventors to think global, we must equip them with the necessary tools to make this leap. Ipophl’s PCT Filing Assistance Program contributes to this goal in that it handholds under-resourced inventors throughout the process of securing protection of their inventions across their foreign markets of choice,” Ipophl Director General Rowel Barba said in a statement on Monday.

The PCT is a filing system which allows single-application for protection of invention patents or utility models (UMs) in some or in all of PCT’s 153 contracting states.

“With their inventions or UMs patented, our FIlipino inventors can advance in the global competition with greater ease as they are assured of exclusive rights over the making, using, offering for sale, selling, or importing of their inventions without their license,” Barba said.

According to I Ipophl, filings of innovation and technology support offices slipped by 76 percent in utility models year-on-year in 2020.

Filings also went down by 69 percent in industrial designs and 62 percent in patents.

The Bureau of Patents implements the PCT Filing Assistance Program where qualified beneficiaries enjoy waived fees for an International Search (IS) Report ($400 for small entities and $1,000 for big entities) and an International Preliminary Examination (IPE) Report ($200 for small entities and $500 for big entities) and technical consultation regarding the PCT system and the application process.

An IS report identifies the existing patents and prior art which may affect an invention’s patentability while an IPE report is an initial assessment of an application’s novelty, inventive step and industrial applicability prepared according to international standards.

Ipophl said these reports serve to help an applicant evaluate the chances of his invention being patented under the PCT.

“Ipophl has been aggressively upskilling its examiners with higher technical skills in research and examination to ensure that patents that enter markets are quality inventions, serving the purpose of the patent system to move innovation forward,” said Barba.