The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed some minor changes to the PCT Rules that came into force on 1 July 2010. Changes to practice appear negligible.
Amendments (to keep the EPO happy):
- You need to provide basis for claim amendments (Rules 46.5(iii) , 66.8(a),(c)).
- Penalty for non-compliance: International Preliminary Examination Authority (IPEA) may ignore your amendments when drawing up the International Preliminary Examination Report (IPER – Rule 70.2(c-bis) ).
Supplementary International Search (SIS – this came in on 1 January 2009: keep up):
- The Supplementary International Search Authority (SISA) may consider a SIS-request not to have been made if it covers claims it will/can not search (Rule 45bis.5(g),(h)). For example, EPO will not search business methods from the US.
- SISA may limit the number of claims they search (Rule 45bis.9(c)).
Fee Amounts (stop reading – not important):
- The calculations used to come up with non-Swiss currency equivalents have changed.
