INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY / TMT PRACTICE
International Patenting
In order to ensure legal protection in other countries for inventions and utility models, one must go through the patenting procedure in these jurisdictions in accordance with the national or, if possible, regional patent system, for example, the European Patent Convention, using the Patent Cooperation Treaty.
The set of measures carried out by patent attorneys of the company together with a client for obtaining protection of technical solutions in foreign countries is most commonly called “international patenting”. These are always difficult and costly operations that must be correctly selected and planned at the very beginning, otherwise their result will not be a geographical extension of the protection of important technical solutions for the client, but wasted resources and lost time.
In the modern world, there is a large set of legal tools for the implementation of individual stages of international patenting, however, the use of each of these tools should be timely and rational, be clearly integral to the general patenting strategy. A very important part of the work of a patent attorney in international patenting is that, having considered the tasks facing the client, as well as the timing and resources for their implementation, offer him the most suitable international patenting strategy, explaining its special aspects and expected results.
The international patenting strategy also includes the selection of foreign law firms to represent clients in national and regional Patent Offices, since in most countries such representation is mandatory. When selecting foreign patent attorneys, we are always guided by the same principles as when preparing our applications, namely, a patent attorney who has an education in the field of technology to which the invention belongs, as well as sufficient practical experience and impeccable business reputation, should represent the client in each foreign country.
