Costa Rica signs up for Budapest Depositary Treaty

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has announced that, on 30 June 2008, Costa Rica requested accession to the Budapest Treaty on the International Recognition of the Deposit of Microorganisms for the Purposes of Patent Procedure, becoming the 69th member country.

Accession to this Treaty results from the obligations assumed by Costa Rica within the framework of the Intellectual Property chapter of the Free Trade Agreement with the United States of America. The Budapest Treaty allows patent applicants to comply easily with the microorganism deposit requirement established in some jurisdictions for patent applications, usually to meet the legal requirement of sufficiency of disclosure, given the practical impossibility of describing in full an invention involving a microorganism. In particular the Treaty establishes that Member Countries which allow or require the deposit of microorganisms within their patent application procedures must recognize and accept, for this purpose, the deposit made by the applicant before an International Deposit Authority (IDA) validated by WIPO. In this manner, with just one deposit before an IDA, the applicant is able to comply with the legal requirement, submitting a copy of the deposit receipt, without having to make independent deposits in each country of interest for a patent application. The Budapest Treaty will enter into force in Costa Rica on 30 September 2008.

The full text of the Treaty may be obtained by clicking here.

Text prepared by Néstor Morera Víquez