What is the full form of PCT?

PCT stands for "Patent Cooperation Treaty".

This is an international law treaty that facilitates the procedure of filing patent applications to protect inventions in each other states. The application that is filed under this act is called an international application or PCT application.

After the filing of the application, then it is received by Receiving Office (RO) that further leads to the search that is performed by the International Searching Authority (ISA), which later on works according to the application’s requirement. The application does not itself results in the grant of a patent since there is no such thing as an “international patent”, and the grant of patent is a prerogative of each national or regional authority.

The states that fall under this form a union that is called as International Patent Cooperation Union. It actually started during the year 1970 when the treaty was signed but the official application was filed during 1978.