BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - October 19, 2010) - Fish & Richardson has been named the top intellectual property law firm in the United States in Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) application filings, according to Managing Intellectual Property's second annual worldwide PCT rankings. Fish filed 734 PCT applications in the United States, far exceeding the second-ranked firm by nearly 100 applications. Fish also was ranked number two worldwide, based on the filings of firms' various offices around the world. This is the second year in a row that Fish received top PCT rankings.
The PCT is an international treaty, administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), between more than 125 Paris Convention countries. The PCT makes it possible to seek patent protection for an invention simultaneously in each of a large number of countries by filing a single "international" patent application. Developed in 1970, and most recently modified in 2001, PCT is intended to streamline the patent application process and thus save time and cost for the applicant and patent offices around the world. In an effort to further improve the system, WIPO launched the Patent Prosecution Highway earlier this year to fast track PCT applications between participating countries, thus allowing applicants to obtain patents faster and more efficiently.
Managing Intellectual Property, a leading international magazine for IP owners, compiled data based on details of PCT applications published on the WIPO website, and then ranked firms according to the number of PCT applications filed that were due for national stage entry during 2010. The firms were listed in order of number of applications filed in their jurisdiction and worldwide. Inovia, a global company that coordinates PCT national stage entry for its clients, assisted in compiling and verifying the data. The results are based on applications with a priority date between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2008, which corresponds to applications due to enter the national phase in 2010.
Fish & Richardson is a leading global law firm with more than 350 attorneys and technology specialists practicing intellectual property strategy and counseling, intellectual property litigation, and business litigation. Fish does cutting-edge legal work for innovative clients who value their intellectual property. The firm was recently named top patent prosecution firm (Managing Intellectual Property, February 2010), was honored as an IP Firm of the Year (Law360, January 2010), and named a finalist for top IP Litigation Department of the Year (American Lawyer, January 2010). Fish handles more patent litigation than any other law firm (IP Law & Business, September 2009), is the number one IP firm for America's biggest companies (Corporate Counsel, September 2009), and was named the number one firm in the world for PCT filings (Managing Intellectual Property, October 2009). The firm also handled two of the top ten most important IP cases of 2009 (Managing Intellectual Property, January 2010). For more information, visit http://www.fr.com.
Contact Information:
Contact:
Amy Blumenthal
Blumenthal & Associates
(617) 879-1511
amyb@blumenthalpr.com
or
Kelly Largey
Fish & Richardson
(800) 818-5070
largey@fr.com