There are some people who spend the better parts of their day trying to invent something new that will help to change the world. This might be a medicine that will cure a disease that is currently killing millions or could be something that will make it more comfortable to survive through an eighteen hour flight. If you're an inventor and you have created something new then you're going to want to make sure you get a patent for your invention so that you can make money off of it without that product being created by someone else. If you want to sell your product all over the world then you're going to need to apply for a foreign patent.

While you might know right from the beginning that you're going to want to market and sell your product outside of your own country, you're going to want to start by getting a patent in your own nation before you look into foreign patent filing. In America, this is going to mean filling out a priority patent application. This is what you're going to need to start of the application process when you want to move into the international market. You will not be able to apply for a foreign patent until your priority patent has been accepted in your home country for at least twelve months.

After that year of waiting, you will finally be ready to take your product around the world and will now want to apply for a Patent Cooperation Treaty, or PCT. This will allow you to get patents in up to 140 different countries all around the globe. But, you should remember that this is not an applications that gets you all of those patents in one shot. You will still need to apply to all of the different countries individually to get the proper certification for your product there. Make sure you know all of the rules and regulations associated with a country before you start the patent application process there. You will find that there are many different ways of getting a patent and will want to make sure you're going about it right every time. There are some systems throughout the world where you can fill out one application that will be applied to patents in a number of different countries.