Ms. Aleksandra Mihailović, Assistant Director in charge of the Patent Sector of the Intellectual Property Office of the Republic of Serbia, at the proposal of the Central European and Baltic States (CEBS) Regional Group chaired the 18th meeting of the Working Group for the Development of the Patent Cooperation Treaty of the World Intellectual Property Organization, held in Geneva from February 18 to 20, 2025.
The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) was adopted in 1970 in Washington, D.C. USA, in order to establish a simpler, more efficient and less expensive system for the international filing of patent applications – the PCT System. Since the beginning, the PCT System has been a great success having steady increase of member states and the number of filed international patent applications. In order to ensure the continual development of the system, a Working Group for the Development of the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) was established in 2007, with the aim to improve and achieve more effective use of the existing legal framework, i.e. to reduce the need for amendments of the treaty itself. At the moment, there are 158 member states of the PCT. the latest country to accede has been Uruguay, as announced at the 2025 Working Group meeting.
You can access the meeting via the WIPO Webcast link.