Dear friends, colleagues, and clients,
We are writing to you in this opportunity to inform you that, as part of our commitment to you and to our activity, we have decided that our Patent Department gives major and urgent priority to those queries about patents related to diagnosing or treating the COVID-19. By doing so, the goal is to offer our quick response and the possibility to file the patent before the patent office as soon as possible.
It is worth highlighting that even though other patent offices, as for instance the Brazilian or the Chinese one, have disposed different mechanisms to fasten the process of applications related to this topic, the Argentinian office has not done it yet.
Likewise, we remind you that Argentina is one of the few countries that is not member of the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) yet and, consequently, applications cannot be filed in our country through this via.
Unfortunately, sometimes this is learnt the hard way, when there is nothing left to do. This is why we would like to remind you to check your PCT applications recently filed and add a new deadline or checkpoint.
Nevertheless, we do count with a PPH program (Patent Prosecution Highway) for all those applications whose priority has been analyzed by offices that have similar examination standards to ours (USPTO, EPO, CNIPA, etc.). This program allows the granting of the applications that were filed abroad by adapting the claims to those allowed in the foreign application. Fortunately, this process has been proved to be effective since it allows the granting of applications that used to take years in only a matter of months.
Should you have any other doubt related to this or any other topic regarding Intellectual Property, please, contact us.
Best regards,
