WARNING: Although the information which follows was correct at the time of original publication in the PCT Newsletter, some information may no longer be applicable; for example, amendments may have been made to the PCT Regulations and Administrative Instructions, as well as to PCT Forms, since the PCT Newsletter concerned was published; changes to certain fees and references to certain publications may no longer be valid. Wherever there is a reference to a PCT Rule, please check carefully whether the Rule in force at the date of publication of the advice has since been amended.
Monitoring changes to the PCT Applicant’s Guide in the eGuide
Q: I am a paralegal in a large patent law firm responsible for monitoring trends in filing requirements and PCT fees for the international and national phase. Up until now, I annotated printouts or electronic PDF documents from the PCT Applicant’s Guide, in order to have full historical files of Offices of particular interest to our law firm. I hear that the PDF documents may soon no longer be available and that I should now use exclusively the "eGuide”. If this is the case, how can I continue monitoring important information related to the PCT Applicant’s Guide? Are there any new functionalities in the eGuide to help me in my continuing responsibilities relating to Guide content?
A: The fully electronic version of the PCT Applicant’s Guide, called the “eGuide”, was first launched in December 2022 (see news) and has, since then, been improved technically, most recently on 15 September 2023. Unlike the separate PDF Annexes for each PCT role an Office plays which have been contained in the traditional Guide, the eGuide shows all information relating to an Office on a single page. Each page can be navigated from the top navigation bar and can be searched using the search function (or CTRL + F) without having to open multiple PDF Annexes. You may also use the print function (or CTRL + P) to print a particular page as needed or to generate PDF copies of the content (for example, via “print to pdf” functions) if there are those in your organizations who continue to want to consult PDF copies of Guide content.
If you want to find out what has been changed compared to the previous content on the page relating to an Office, you can see this from the text in blue. If, for example, the amount of a certain PCT fee has changed, the new amount will be shown in blue until a new version of the page is published. Note that if part of a paragraph has been changed, the full paragraph in which the change was made will be shown in blue. Furthermore, a digest showing a summary of all changes is available on the top of each profile. The digest includes links to all the changes in the document and links to versions that will enter into force at a later date.
What’s more, access to past versions is available from the top of the page enabling you to maintain a full historical background and to track changes that have been made. Access to any older information can be found in the PCT Newsletter archive (in particular, in the fee tables) and the archive of the Official Notices (PCT Gazette) (https://www.wipo.int/pct/en/official_notices/index.html). You may also contact the International Bureau (IB) to obtain information published in the PCT Applicant’s Guide in the past.
The eGuide also contains “mouseover” information on each two-letter code in order to show the full name of the Country or Organization and/or the related Office, when you hover the cursor over the code. Clicking on the underlined two-letter code directly opens the applicable page in a new tab to search therein for the relevant information. As a result, if an Office page contains a reference to another Office (e.g. information on the related ISA), you can directly access the information without having to go back to the original page.
Additionally, if you “mouseover” any information shown in blue in the digest of upcoming changes, the previous content is displayed in a box, which is particularly helpful for understanding changes of PCT fees.
The eGuide is updated weekly with information received from the various Offices. You can sign up for a weekly e-mail containing links to the Guide pages of the Offices for which there have been changes (at https://www3.wipo.int/newsletters/en/#pct_guide).
So far, the content of the eGuide is completely available in both English and French. The IB intends to extend its coverage into additional languages, noting that the two general parts have already also been made available in Russian and Spanish. For further information about the eGuide, please visit:
https://www.wipo.int/pct/en/guide/index.html