Protecting a patent

If a company or a physical person authors a previously inexistent technical invention, they have the right to request an exclusivity of use and a protection for their creation. No invention is indeed safe from theft or from different types of counterfeiting. Filing a patent allows its owner to possess exclusive rights to his invention for a determined period of time.

What is a patent? | How to register a patent internationally | What to check before you start? |

What is a patent?

A legal protection tool: A patent is an exclusive right granted by the State for a limited period of time and concerning a novel invention which involves an inventive step and is capable of industrial application. Filing a patent allows its author to have an exclusive right to his or her invention. Whether an individual or a legal entity, the inventor is the only one to decide on the use of his invention or indeed on his own exclusive use it. He is entitled to authorize or prohibit the use of his invention.

A trade weapon: A patent is a strategic weapon allowing a company to strengthen its market position, especially in innovative sectors, to capitalize on its invention by limiting its use by other parties, to benefit from the sources of income represented by the sale of use licences and to defend itself against the competition from similar inventions or from counterfeiting.

How to register a patent internationally?

Your needs: Patent is a territorial right and only grants you rights in the country where it has been filed. However, the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, signed on March 20, 1883 in Paris, established a union between the contracting states, based on which the nationals of any contracting state enjoy the same rights in the matter of industrial property as those of others states party to the Convention. The list of the contracting member countries is available on the WIPO website.

There are several methods of filing a patent in a foreign country. Firstly, it is useful to decide in how many countries should your patent be filed. Based on this, you will choose the most appropriate method.

Filing locally: It is preferable that you file at the national intellectual property office of your target country. The World Intellectual Property Organisation offers a directory of local intellectual property offices from all over the world. However, this solution is only possible for a very limited number of countries, since it represents significant financial cost and requires numerous administrative procedures, as well as a translation of the patent into each of the national languages.

Regional filing: You wish to file your patent in several countries belonging to the same regional intellectual property organisation. Filing with a regional office is a simpler alternative to the previous one. The application must only be filed once, in a limited number of languages and it is valid either for all the member countries of this organisation, or only for some of them, depending on your needs. However, the targeted states must validate your request in order for it to become effective.

International filing: The targeted countries are numerous are spread out throughout the whole world. In this case, you have the possibility to use an international procedure, which can lead to the filing of several national or international patents. This procedure is based on the Patent Cooperation Treaty and concerns the countries party to it.

The application must be filed in a single language at the intellectual property office of your own country, which will then transmit it to the WIPO.

The registration at the national level is completed upon the filing of translations of the patent application in each of the chosen countries’ national language, by the payment of the required fees and by the appointment of a local representative.

What to check before you start?

The innovative step: In order to be patentable, an invention must meet specific criteria: it must show an element of novelty, an inventive step and must have potential industrial application. For more information, see the WIPO's definition of a patent.

Novelty

You must also check that the invention for which you are seeking a patent has not already been described by someone else before you. Most intellectual property offices offer a patent research facility directly on their website. You can use the different services of the WIPO:

The budget: Filing a patent application represents a financial cost, as well as extra workload (administrative management of the applications, monitoring of counterfeits, legal protection of your patent rights). Make sure you have the financial and human resources necessary to monitor your patent or your patent portfolio.