International Patents: Where PCT and WIPO Actually Start

The usual route, step by step

• National filing: the first application in your own country. Its date becomes your priority date.
• PCT application: within 12 months of the priority date you can file one international application with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
• International search report: a competent authority searches prior art and reports on how novel your invention appears to be.
• National phase: usually by around 30 months from the priority date you must enter each target country separately — for example the USPTO for the United States or the EPO for Europe.

Three requirements that apply everywhere

• Novelty: it must not have been disclosed publicly before the filing date.
• Inventive step: it must not be obvious to a person skilled in that field.
• Industrial applicability: it must be capable of being made or used.

The most common mistake is early disclosure: presenting the idea at a conference, publishing a paper, or even a public post can destroy novelty. If you have both a paper and a patent in mind, decide the order with advice — usually file first, publish second.

Cost and time

Costs come in three parts: official fees (WIPO and each national office), attorney or agent fees, and certified translations for the national phase. The total depends on how many countries you target and there is no fixed global figure; WIPO publishes its official fee schedule. From first filing to grant usually takes several years.

What to watch out for

• Nobody can guarantee a patent will be granted; that decision belongs to the patent office.
• A “certificate of registration” is not the same as a granted patent — read what the document actually says.
• Federation memberships and exhibitions are side credentials, not equivalent to a patent.

If you want to move a case forward with technical documentation and stage-by-stage follow-up, ApplyDesk does exactly that under a contract with staged payments.