The PCT has announced that its Online Document Upload Facility became fully operational on Monday, 18 January, 2010. This facility permits PCT applicants and/or their agents to submit documents relating to international applications in PDF format, via the WIPO website.
One advantage claimed for this development is that post-filing electronic documents can be submitted quickly and efficiently to the IB, thus avoiding the costs and delays relating to paper mailing whilst overcoming image quality problems that can result from fax transmissions or paper scanning.
However, the service is not to be used for the initial filing of PCT international applications online to WIPO Geneva as a Receiving Office, only for subsequent submission of later-filed documents that are normally addressed to WIPO in its capacity as International Bureau only. Furthermore, the process only works if the International Bureau has already received the Record Copy from the receiving Office and started processing the application.
The long list of documents that may be uploaded includes amendments to the claims under PCT Article 19,requests for recording change of person, name, address, etc., notices of withdrawal, requests for Supplementary International Search (SIS), and where applicable, translations of international applications and sequence listings under PCT Rule 13ter for SIS purposes, informal comments on the written opinion of the International Searching Authority and general correspondence for the attention of the IB. Further guidelines are to be found at http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/
Comment
All the submissions listed are text based submissions that I routinely fax and in addition to the fax receipt generated by my system, I get an acknowledgement from WIPO by return. I’ve never had a problem with the faxed document being considered unclear. Thus I am not sure that this development is in any way significant, except for the possible eventual reduction in paper usage.
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On 14 January 2010 President Barack Obama told technology executives at the Forum on Modernizing Government:
”Believe it or not, in our patent office — now, this is embarrassing — this is an institution responsible for protecting and promoting innovation — our patent office receives more than 80 percent of patent applications electronically, then manually prints them out, scans them, and enters them into an outdated case management system…This is one of the reasons why the average processing time for a patent is roughly three years.”
It’s a great quote. So what if Barak is apparently wrong and the USPTO stopped doing that back in 2006???
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Another great quote: Dr. Michael Bart, the Head of the PCT Receiving Office in Israel told me that a colleague at the EPO stated that “A paperless patent office is like a paperless toilet. “
Incidentally, the Israel Patent Office is also gearing up for electronic filing.
What of the ecological issues? Well the following story is absolutely true: whilst working at the UK National Physics Laboratory, NPL, in the early Nineties, I used to receive the internal newspaper of the Department of Trade & Industry. Then secretary of State for Trade & Industry Michael Hesseltine requested ideas for minimizing the paper-chase to be submitted on the requisite form in triplicate.
And finally, the ultimate all-in-one machine – one of my inventions, that I considered filing - the combined fax, printer, photocopier with shredder and bin. Does the whole process without human intervention.
Posted by Dr Michael Factor 
