An international patent application is a patent application filed by an applicant with the Patent Office of a certain State Party in accordance with the prescribed procedures when a patent protection is granted to an invention in the State Party of the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT for short).
First of all, there is no international patent, and the exact name should be "International Patent Application". Secondly, the above sentence means that when a national of a State party to the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) wants to apply for patent protection for a certain technology in one or more States parties to the PCT, he can submit the application documents in the specified language to the accepting entity or the international bureau specified in the PCT according to the procedures specified in the PCT, and this submission procedure is deemed to have been completed. The Patent Office in China National Intellectual Property Administration, China is the accepting unit for the formulation of this Treaty, and Chinese is also the language specified in this Treaty. Therefore, China people can file an "international patent application" in Chinese in China National Intellectual Property Administration, China. Which countries and languages have been designated, you need to pay attention to the latest designated list at any time.
In the past, in order to obtain patent protection from several countries, it was necessary to apply for patents from each country one by one, and the procedures and formalities were very cumbersome. In order to solve this problem, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Japan and other countries held a diplomatic conference in Washington, USA, and signed the Patent Cooperation Treaty. Up to now, its member countries have reached 1 14. In other words, the international application submitted by the applicant is valid in 1 14 countries. The purpose of PCT is to strengthen the legal protection of inventions and promote international scientific and technological progress and economic development by simplifying the procedures and formalities of international patent application.
It should be noted that this procedure only simplifies the application stage and does not include the review and authorization stage. In other words, it is wrong for some people to establish the concept of "international patent", and patent protection can be obtained in all countries by submitting an application once.
International application is divided into two stages: international and domestic. The international stage includes the acceptance, disclosure, retrieval and preliminary examination of international applications. The domestic stage mainly includes the review of international applications for authorization by designated countries or selected countries and the handling of other related affairs.