Timeline for foreign filing

[gloloed]

What is the name of your state? Washington. I understand that I have one year from date of first public disclosure of an invention to file a Provisional Patent. Do I also have one year from date of first public disclosure to file for a foreign patent?

 

[divgradcurl]

What you are talking about is 35 U.S.C. 102, which states that you cannot file a for a patent on something that has been known or in public use for more than a year from the date of filing. That's the U.S. law.

In many foreign countries, you may not obtain a patent if there has been ANY public use or knowledge prior to the filing date, even 1 day prior. However, this is country-specific, and further some countries handle patent applications that come to their offices via the PCT differently than they handle direct national applications.

Your best bet is to discuss your patent and application and plans with a local patent agent or patent attorney to determine who best to go about the application process without losing your rights to patent in other countries. Besides, even though you can, as an individual inventor, file and prosecute your own patent application (with the help of the patent office) in the U.S., the PCT rules are generally substantially more complicated, and the foreign office rules are also similarly complicated, so if you want to file in more than one country, you are best off retaining the services of a patent profesisonal.

 

[marubear]

To the OP of this thread:
I agree with the previous author who replied. Additionally, please note that you can file for a provisional patent application and then claim priority to that provisional patent application when you decide to file a PCT application. The deadline for filing a PCT application and to convert a provisional to a nonprovisional patent application is 1 year from the date of filing the provisional patent application.

Additionally, the PCT application is a way of selecting one or more "foreign" countries/regions in which you are interested in filing. Examples: EPO (Europe - you can file in member states), China, Japan, Canada, etc. Many countries are members of the PCT Convention (a good majority).

The bottom line is that I hope that you can obtain assistance in filing a provisional patent application and publicly disclose, use, sell, license, etc., the invention subsequent to the filing of the provisional patent application.

Any further questions, you are free to contact me off the list.