The Patent Law Treaty 2000

In one line

The Patent Law Treaty does for patents what the Trademark Law Treaty did for marks, fixing the maximum formal requirements an office may impose and giving an applicant a route back when a deadline is missed.

In exam wording: the Patent Law Treaty, adopted at Geneva on 1 June 2000 and in force from 28 April 2005, harmonises the formal requirements of national and regional patent applications and patents, prescribing a maximum set of requirements which a Contracting Party may impose, standardising the requirements for according a filing date, providing relief in respect of time limits and reinstatement of rights, and restricting the grounds on which a patent may be revoked for a formal defect.

Articles 1 and 2: vocabulary and the general principles

Article 1 defines the abbreviated expressions used throughout, including Office, application, patent, person, communication, records, Regulations, Patent Cooperation Treaty, Contracting Party and Assembly, and it is the ordinary opening article of a modern WIPO treaty.

The general principles

Article 2(1) is the character of the whole Treaty: nothing in this Treaty or the Regulations shall be construed as prescribing anything that would limit the freedom of a Contracting Party to prescribe such requirements of the applicable substantive law relating to patents as it desires.

So the Treaty says nothing about patentability, novelty, inventive step, exclusions or infringement. A candidate who suggests otherwise has misunderstood it entirely.

Article 2(2): nothing in this Treaty or the Regulations shall be construed as limiting the freedom of a Contracting Party to prescribe such requirements as, from the viewpoint of national security, it deems necessary, and Article 4 repeats it as a separate security exception.

Article 3, applications and patents to which the Treaty applies. It applies to national and regional applications for patents for invention and for patents of addition, filed with or for the Office of a Contracting Party, and to international applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty once they have entered the national phase; and to patents for invention and patents of addition granted with effect for a Contracting Party.

Article 5: the filing date, and why it is the most useful article

Article 5(1)(a): a Contracting Party shall provide that the filing date of an application shall be the date on which its Office has received all of the following elements, filed at the option of the applicant on paper or otherwise as permitted by the Office: an express or implicit indication to the effect that the elements are intended to be an application; indications allowing the identity of the applicant to be established or allowing the applicant to be contacted by the Office; and a part which on the face of it appears to be a description.