Statement of Inventorship Not Required? Not True
Singapore Intellectual Property Blog
Since yesterday’s post on the topic of inventorship in Singapore, we have been made aware of some potentially misleading information on the Internet:
This passage appears to indicate that a Statement of Inventorship is not required to be filed, unless IPOS calls for it.
If so, this statement couldn’t be more wrong. In fact, if you don’t file a Statement of Inventorship in time and wait for IPOS to ask you to file it, you might end up with a patent application that is treated as having been abandoned!
The screenshot was taken from the website of one of our competitors in Singapore, a branch office of a well-known firm from Australia.
Under “Patent Filing Requirements in Singapore”, the website says:
“Direct filings under the Paris Convention
A Statement of Inventorship detailing how the applicant obtained rights to the invention from the inventors and the right to claim priority from the applicants of the listed priority applications is not required unless requested by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore”
Requirement to Identify Inventors
As shown in our earlier post in this series on the provisions relating to inventorship in Singapore, it is an absolute requirement for the applicant to file a Statement of Inventorship on any Singapore patent application where the applicants are not the inventors.
The Patents Rules provide for IPOS to treat an application that does not have such a document filed as having been abandoned.
The only exception is where a PCT application has entered the Singapore national phase, in which case a Statement of Inventorship is not needed if the PCT application has complied with the equivalent PCT rules.
For a Singapore patent application which is a direct filing under the Paris Convention, a Statement of Inventorship needs to be filed by the deadline of 16 months from the earliest claimed priority date (not in response to a request from IPOS).
Please see our follow-up post for details of how and when to file a Statement of Inventorship at IPOS.
Questions?
If you have any questions on inventorship or the filing of Patents Form 8, please get in touch with us.