TNAG-1495-FCO40-2053-Hong-Kong-intellectual-property-regime-1986 — Page 20

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search conducted by one of

a handful of International Search

Authorities (the Australian, Japanese, Russian and United

States Patent Offices, the European Patent Office and to a

more limited extent the Swedish and Austrian Offices); Chapter

2 establishes an International Preliminary Examination.

Participating states are not obliged to adhere to both

Chapters, nor is an applicant obliged to have the preliminary

examination. The Treaty is not founded upon any international

agreement about the grounds of validity for a patent. The

Preliminary Examination accordingly leads to a report on a

number of basic questions (patentabie subject matter, novelty,

inventive step and industrial applicability) in accordance

with criteria that are defined only generally in the Treaty.

Nevertheless, for countries which have no examining system, the

report may provide a basis upon which a national patent office,

applying its own law, can decide whether or not to grant a

patent. In the hope of opening this opportunity to developing

countries, it was hastily decided to introduce the second

Chapter along with the first in 1978. Apart from this, the

main advantage of the Treaty is practical: it allows an

applicant to institute applications in numerous countries

by a single procedure; and to delay his final decision to apply

in a number of countries (with the official fees, agents' fees and translation costs that this entails) for a period of

20 months (or, where Chapter 2 can be employed, for

25 months) after his priority date. What the Treaty does not

provide is an "international patent", since in the end each

/national