WIPO Publishes National Phase Status Information

Although the Patent Cooperation Treaty does not specifically require that applicants or national or regional Offices (henceforth “national Offices”) inform WIPO about the status of specific international applications in the national phase, information on whether an international application has entered the national phase as well as other information relating to the national phase can, where available, can be accessed via the PatentScope database at www.wipo.int/pctdb. Where available, status information such as patent grant, withdrawal or refusal is also published.



The information can be found by clicking the tab “national phase” when viewing the data regarding the international application concerned. There are currently over 1 million national phase entry records, as well as status information for 458,625 PCT applications available via the PatentScope database, and it is expected that such information will become increasingly available in the coming months, as an increasing number of national Offices cooperate with WIPO in this way.

However, information on the national phase is only available where WIPO has received the relevant information, either directly from national Offices or via the INPADOC database, and, in most cases, is available only after 30 months from the priority date, which is about 12 months after international publication.Currently, the 24 countries listed below have furnished data relating to the national phase:

• Australia
• Austria
• Belize
• Bulgaria
• Canada
• China
• Georgia
• Germany
• Israel
• Japan
• Kenya
• Latvia
• Lithuania
• Mexico
• New Zealand
• Republic of Korea
• Romania
• Russian Federation
• Slovakia
• Slovenia
• Spain
• Turkey
• United Kingdom
• Uzbekistan

The timeliness of the available information varies according to the Office supplying the data. A detailed table of dates covered for each Office is available by clicking on “more information” from the National Phase tab
described above, or at the following address:
www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/nationalphase.jsp