Application Numbers for International Applications Entering the National Phase in Japan
In some cases, the date on which the Japanese Patent Office (JPO) assigns an application number to an international application that has entered the national phase in Japan can be considerably later than the day on which the documents formally entering the international application into the Japanese national phase were actually filed.
The reasons are as follows:
If the applicant fails to specify the designated states, all PCT member states are assumed to be designated as provided by the revised PCT directive 4.9 enacted January 1, 2004. By default, Japan is now considered to be a designated state in an extremely large number of international applications, and, if all these default applications were sent to Japan as well as those in which it is explicitly designated, the JPO would end up handling a large number of applications that never, in fact, enter the Japanese national phase. Consequently, the JPO has exercised its right under PCT Article 20 to waive the requirement that all applications designing Japan be sent to it promptly.
Thus, international applications dated on or after January 1, 2004 are not delivered to the JPO until the completion of the period for entry into the national phase, even if the procedures for entering the application into the Japanese national phase have been completed earlier. Since the JPO requires the documents it handles to be originals and not copies, the JPO will only assign Japanese application numbers for the Japanese phase of international applications after it receives the international application documents from WIPO, approximately 30 months after the priority date.
Finally, the JPO has announced that when a request for examination is filed for a national phase application that has not yet been assigned a Japanese application number, it will shortened the delay in assigning application numbers slightly.