TAGUIG CITY, March 11 -- The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) has extended until Dec. 31, 2021 its Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) Filing Assistance Program to benefit more inventors exploring opportunities in global markets. The PCT is a cost-efficient international filing system which allows single-application for protection of invention patents or utility models (UMs) in some or in all of PCT’s 153 contracting states. “As we encourage our inventors to think global, we must equip them with the necessary tools to make this leap. IPOPHL’s PCT Filing Assistance Program contributes to this goal in that it handholds under-resourced inventors throughout the process of securing protection of their inventions across their foreign markets of choice,” IPOPHL Director General Rowel S. Barba said.