Patent Attorney and Founder
Everybody, I’m J.D. Houvener, your host of the Bold Today’s Show. Are you the inventor, entrepreneur, or business owner? Get your daily dose of inspiration to make the world a better place.
Alright, you’ve made it, and to answer yesterday’s question now and make sure to get that out right away. There’s actually over 9,000 USPTO examiners working for the Patent Office, examining all the inventions that you are submitting. So, it’s an incredible volume of work, and it’s notable. That’s why I’ve been talking about all this policy change to try to integrate and make it easier to predict and easier on the examiners so that the inventors actually get the right result they’re looking for when they submit an invention for application.
I want to also ask a today’s Bold Challenge. If you were going to file, and you should internationally, right with your invention – you’ve already filed your provisional within the US, and you’re now looking to file your non-provisional with reference to other countries using the PCT – what is the one country, the one patent office that you’d like to submit to? If you’re going to submit, put in the comments below what you would, and why that patent office is one that you’d want to submit to. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about which would be my recommendation.
Today, we’re going to talk about the Patent Prosecution Highway. It’s one of the big policy agenda items for the USPTO and patent policy currently, and it’s been in place now for a few years. It’s been as part of a pilot program since I think 2013. What has been the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH)? It’s a program that works in unison with the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). When you, the major file international application through the PCT, what that does, in essence, is it buys you time – up to 18 months to decide when to file your application in other countries. You can take some time to figure out the market, understand which countries you’d like to pursue protection in, and you then go to what’s called the national stage in other countries.
In that time, which could be a year and a half, the U.S. application could actually be granted. Certain claims within that original patent application could be granted. The beauty of the Patent Prosecution Highway and what it does now is it allows the other countries, the later filing countries, to reference back to that original country, the original filing. If there’s the rights granted in the US, for example, that could get virtually copied, and the examination will get short-circuited and be recognized in those other countries. So, it’s a huge benefit to having that examination and search all recognized by those other sister countries.
So, a Patent Prosecution Highway is certainly something to consider if you’ve got pending international rights and you have a granted, at least one granted claim on the underlying US application. So, I know that’s a lot. Maybe if you’re brand new to this, this is the first time you’re hearing about patents, and here I am talking about the international authority. Anyway, that’s how we like to work here. I want to give you just a tidbit, just kind of scratch the surface of patent law. As you’ll see as we get into these daily programs, there’s so much to it, and I’m excited about it. Obviously, it’s what I do and what I love. If you’ve got follow-up questions and you want to talk about your specific technology, feel free to follow up with us. Go to our website at boldpatents.com or feel free to book a free 30-minute consultation. We’d be happy to chat with you confidentially and make sure that we are understanding each step of the process. And I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your day and again, tune in for tomorrow’s Friday session. It should be fun. I hope you all tune in for that. I’m your host J.D. Houvener for the Bold Today’s Show. Go big, go bold at boldip.com.