The World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”), which administers the Patent Cooperation Treaty (“PCT”) and processes international PCT patent applications, has announced a new licensing feature that will be available, starting January 1, 2012, to PCT applicants on the WIPO PATENTSCOPE website. The new feature allows applicants to signal their willingness to license inventions contained in their PCT patent applications. 

Applicants can submit a specific PCT form (“Form PCT/IB/382”) entitled “Request for indication of availability for licensing purposes,” or submit a letter indicating that the claimed invention is available for licensing. The submission may also include licensing terms. The licensing indications may be made at any time from the filing of the PCT application until the expiration of the 30-month time period from the application priority date.

Third parties may access the licensing statement via the “Bibliographic data” tab or the “Documents” tab for the particular PCT application on PATENTSCOPE. The licensing statement, however, will not be part of the published international application itself. Additionally, the existence of licensing indications will be added to the list of search criteria within PATENTSCOPE.