Mr. Matthew Bryan the Director of Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) at WIPO gave a presentation to the Association of Israel Patent Attorneys, the AIPI today at the American Zionist House, Tel Aviv – the traditional venue used by the organization.
Matthew Bryan
- ZOA House
In addition to an overview of recent developments, participants were treated to a glimpse of what the future holds.
Apart from the traditional overview of statistics regarding which countries and companies are heaviest users, the new kids on the block - in this case Chile and Peru joining the PCT - we were informed about supplementary searches and which authorities offer them. Mr. Bryan presented an informative summary of attempts to rationalize national laws, possibilities to have PCT notifications submitted by email, plans to have all priority documents accessible by all member states from databases and a system similar to the USPTO’s public and private versions of PAIR to allow applicants to track developments, and on publication - to allow third parties to see the entire file wrapper.
As suspected from the ongoing drive to recruit examiners despite ever-shortening pendencies prior to issuance of notices before examination, it appears that there are plans afoot to make Israel into an Examining Authority. Since in addition to English speakers, Israel has many Arabic, French, German, Russian and Spanish scientists and engineers, it is to be expected that with proper training and team effort, Israeli examiners will be able to perform a trully multi-lingual search, at least as well as the EPO, USPTO, Nordic and other International Search Authorities, although one assumes Israel will have the problems that other patent offices have with searching Korean, Japanese and Chinese literature.
What was particularly refreshing was the feeling that Mr. Bryan conveyed that applicants were clients of the PCT system, which was there to serve, and that there was a genuine interest to cut costs, to rationalize the multinational filing process by avoiding duplication and to be user friendly.
The event was attended by a few dozen members representing a nice cross-section of practitioners including both sole practitioners and members of the large firms, specialists in all technology fields, experienced and semi-retired attorneys and the newly licensed.
Chairperson Michal Hackmey
Michal Hackmey
is to be thanked for arranging the lecture. It is a shame that such events have not been held more frequently.
