Around The World with Patents

Skyrocketing prices of daily necessities are no longer an odd phenomenon. To keep up with this, we continue to accelerate our money making strategies. With globalization, the world has also become smaller. This means pocketing profits across the globe is no longer insurmountable. In response to all these, the patent protection locations would have to widen too. Today, let’s shelve United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and look at some key geographical areas to patent and their respective patent offices.  

Individual inventors or corporations can apply for patent protection within the Schengen region. Applicants can apply for a patent by using English, French or German. The greatest advantage for this is that a single application is all that is required to be valid in all European Union (EU) states. Therefore, it saves a great deal of time and of course, money.

Recording one of the world’s highest number of patent filings, it is undoubtedly that JPO is one of the world's largest patent offices. One of the contributory factors to Japanese economy today is the numerous patents applications and strict grants for patents. However, according its recent annual report, the office received fewer applications last year as many countries pay more attention to apply patents abroad.

UK is perhaps the earliest country that brought in patents; in 1449 their first patent was born. UKPO officially took its action in 1990, which then, belongs to DTI. Its general director Ron Marchant signed an experimental agreement (Patent Prosecution Highway) with Sir Nakajima, a JPO director and the agreement lasted for a year. This was widely accepted by many countries later as they believe it will greatly reduce the time for analyzing pending patent application and stimulate the co-operation between countries.