By Dennis Crouch
President Barack Obama has now signed-into-law the Patent Law Treaties Implementation Act of 2012, Pub. Law 112-211 (December 19, 2012). The new law contains two titles that provide domestic law required to implement a treaty.
- TITLE I--HAGUE AGREEMENT CONCERNING INTERNATIONAL REGISTRATION OF INDUSTRIAL DESIGNS
- TITLE II--PATENT LAW TREATY (PLT) IMPLEMENTATION
In the grand scheme of patent law, neither treaty is especially substantive. However, the Hague Agreement will likely have a much more substantial impact on the practice of protecting design rights on a global scale. In particular, the Hague Agreement creates a direct connection between US design patent application filing and European (and other) design right registration application and allowing a combined international application. The Hague Agreement implementation has a (likely) one-year effective date and will apply to applications filed after the effective date.
A draft mark-up and commentary can be downloaded here: http://www.patentlyo.com/PLT.pdf
