Promoting Licensing Via the PCT

Beginning January 2012, the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO), which administers the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), will provide international patent applicants the ability to register their willingness to license their inventions. This will be particularly beneficial to universities and other research organizations.

Under this program, an applicant will be able to indicate that an invention covered by an international patent application filed under the PCT is available for licensing by submitting a relatively simple form in connection with the PCT application. The face of the published PCT application will not list the applicant’s intent to license the technology. Instead, WIPO’s PATENTSCOPE website will reflect the licensing indication under the “PCT bibliographic data tab” relating to the PCT application.

Click here for the form, PCT/IB/382, “Request for Indication of Availability for Licensing Purposes.”

Additional information about this program can be found here.