Patent in another country

弁護士

In addition to Steven's answer and given your location, I would suggest that you first file a patent application (national) in Nigeria rather than in India because Nigeria is the country of origin of your invention will then serve as priority of your PCT international application.

It will be important when the time comes to select the countries which interest you the most (148 countries are covered automatically in a PCT application and at the time of the inputs into regional and national phases, within 30 or 31 months from the priority of origin, you will have to decide whether to maintain or not the protection in any country).

Simply, you must know that the overall budget required for a "global" protection easily exceeds 22 523 NGN (US $ 112,810) after a few years (there are fees of local patent attornees, national taxes, answers to the objections of local patent Offices, annuities ...), knowing that a patent lasts 20 years in most countries ...

In the occurrence, given the technology and your strategy, I suggest you to validate your invention, at the end of the PCT procedure, not only in India, the host country, but – i you can - in Europe (EPO), North America, Australia, Japan, China and also Africa. You get indeed on the African continent the OAPI (African Intellectual Property Organization) procedure (mainly French-speaking Ouest countries) and ARIPO (African Regional Intellectual Property Organization) procedure (mainly English-speaking East countries), comparable to what we can do in Europe as they both allow touching a multitude of countries through a single filing.

Moreover, all OAPI states and practically all ARIPO states have ratified the Patent Cooperation Treaty ("PCT"), so:

- using the procedure OAPI (Bangui Agreement of March 2, 1977), you will be able to patent directly your mobile app in the following 17 countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Comoros, Congo, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Central African Republic, Senegal, Chad and Togo.

- and using the procedure ARIPO (Lusaka Agreement of 9 December 1976 and the Harare Protocol of 10 December 1982), you will be able yo patent directly your invention in the following 19 countries: Botswana, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya (very interesting regarding your technology…), Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The 17 other African countries - including the island countries - remaining can only be referred "nationally" via your PCT (or directly if you don’t use PCT).

We have many local correspondents in all these countries (including one in Lagos, Europe and the rest of the world, working with us on the basis of special agreements and we can take in charge, supervise and coordinate your PCT and its followings from France.

Feel free to contact me directly if you want to continue this discussion and, possibly, that we intervene.

Sincerely yours,
Simon

弁理士

Patents are territorial, therefore you need to patent your app in each country in which you believe that you want to do business. So, if you file a patent app in India, then you need to file a PCT application within one year from the date of your filing in India - PCT effectively opens the door for you to worldwide jurisdictions which you must select within a particular period of time, normally 30 months from the date of your filing of your original application in India. PCT also permits you to enter groups of countries, for example, if you file a European patent application, you can effectively obtain a patent which will provide protection in many of the European countries. There are some exceptions - for example, and for some reason, Taiwan is not a member of PCT, therefore you need to file in Taiwan directly within the one year from the filing of your application in India.

IPブローカー

There is none. Patents are geographical in scope so you need to apply in EVERY jurisdiction where you want formal legal protection (which can be expensive can be easily 6-figures). What PaaS have gotten away with is treating it as trade-secret and just doing their best to secure the backend against hackers, insiders and general IP theft (didn't help American Superconductors). On the other hand, you can try tactical patent, identify likely competitors and their jurisdictions or manufacturing partners (assuming embedded into mobile phone). Other tricks like trademark, trade-dress etc just makes it difficult enough that easier to license than to withstand the blizzard of legal filings your $200k corporate lawyer on contingency is prepared to unleash.

On other words, apply a rational risk-weighted cost-benefit analysis first.

弁護士

The other answers sum up the situation fairly well based on the amount of information you've given. I would only add that for your major markets (based on your business plan) it might make sense to file individual applications, such as in the EU, US, China. Each system has its peculiarities when it comes to mobile anything. You may be able to maximize the value of your patent rights in those territories most likely to produce most of your revenue.