INTERNATIONAL PATENTS

Though European and US market are typically the most lucrative, increasing globalization is making the rest of the world worthy of attention. For example, if you fail to patent your drug or manufacturing methods in Brazil, a Brazilian company can cheaply duplicate your work and legally sell the drug in Brazil and any other country where you have not filed for patent protection (actually, Brazil may disregard your patents anyway, as might other countries that don't play by global patent rules). Furthermore, if your patent protects pre-manufacturing steps involved in development of a product (e.g. an early-stage drug discovery technology), companies in foreign countries where you do not have protection may use your invention and legally export downstream products to countries where you do have patent protection.

Conveniently, most of the industrialized countries where you would want to have patent protection have signed a Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), allowing inventors to file a single PCT application to get a priority date in all of those countries at once. Filing the PCT within one year after filing for patent protection in the US gives your US priority date international recognition.

The cost of preparing and filing the PCT is approximately $5,000. Within 30 months of the priority date, you must decide whether to file complete patent applications in individual countries at a cost of about $5,000 or more per country. International patent filing costs can accumulate rapidly, often exceeding $100K. Translating an application into Japanese alone can cost $10,000. Not all inventions are worth this expense. Universities, for example, may just file a US patent application and only proceed with international filings if potential licensors request additional protection and agree to cover all costs.