India deposited its instruments of accession to the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property and to the Patent Co-operation Treaty on September 7, 1998. Since December 7, 1998, it has been possible to designate India in PCT applications and to elect India in the demand for preliminary examination. If India is a designated country in the PCT application and is also elected in the demand for preliminary examination filed within 19 months of the priority date, then the deadline for entry into the National Phase in India is 31 months from the Priority Date. If the applicant does not so elect India in the demand for preliminary examination, then the deadline for entry into the National Phase in India is 21 months from the Priority Date. As such, all applicants who have designated India in their PCT application filed on or after December 7, 1998, will be able to file PCT National Phase applications in India.

PCT What it is

Pct is the acronym for Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), a sister Treaty of the Paris Convention administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It facilitates filing of patent applications under a single umbrella and provides for simplified procedure for the search and examination of such applications. The PCT system is a very popular method of filing patent applications throughout the world. There are now over 125 signatory countries to PCT. The PCT does not provide for the grant of International Patent. The patent rights are still a subject matter governed by the local laws of each country. Under the traditional patent system, individual application should be filed for each country for which patent protection was sought. Applicants from members of Paris convention can claim priority of an earlier application for application filed subsequently in convention countries. However, such application has to be filed within 12 months of the filing date of the application in the home country.

The above method for filing of patent applications for all countries in which the inventor wanted to seek protection with respect to as invention within one year of the filing resulted in huge expenses for translation, official and attorney fees, all at a time he doesn