Budapest Treaty on the Deposit of Microorganisms

 I attended the MyIPO webinar on Budapest Treaty on the Deposit of Microorganisms for the purposes of Patent Procedure on 8 November 2022. I would like to share eight points I learnt from the webinar.

1. Why Budapest Treaty?

​Patents need to disclose how the invention works. There is some difficulty in explaining inventions involving microorganisms that are not publicly available. ​Hence, microorganisms deposited at international depositary authorities (IDAs) are recognized for fulfilling disclosure requirements.

2. What is the Budapest Treaty?

All states party to the Treaty are obliged to accept microorganisms deposited at any IDA as being valid for national patent procedure.

3. What is the benefit of the Budapest Treaty?

Deposit in one IDA is recognised by all states party to the Treaty. Applicants do not need to make a new deposit in each state in which patent protection is sought. Hence, it saves applicants money.

4. Who is IDA?

At the moment there are 48 recognised IDAs. The list of IDAs are available at WIPO. There are two in Australia, three in India, six in the UK and three in the USA. Each IDA provides a list of acceptable biological material and sets its own fee. No IDA is available in Malaysia or ASEAN.

5. Who can deposit at IDA?

Researchers on behalf of applicants can submit the deposit with IDA. An agent is not needed.

6. Any plan for NDA?

Any Malaysia organizations can apply to be a National Depositary Authority (NDA). The organization would need to fulfill several conditions such as storage requirement.

7. How to specify a deposit in a patent application?

After a deposit is made, the IDA and accession number is specified in the patent application. Hence, a patent application is prepared at the same time of the deposit.

8. Who can access deposited microorganisms?

The public would not be able to access the deposited microorganism. The public would need to appoint a competent and neutral person to access the deposited microorganism.