PCT national-phase entry: the 30/31-month deadline explained

For most countries, you must enter the national (or regional) phase of a PCT application within 30 months of your earliest priority date; for some offices — including the European Patent Office — the deadline is 31 months. Miss it and your PCT application generally has no effect in that country. This is one of the most consequential single dates in a patent family, because it sets off a separate deadline in every country you want protection in — and they don't all fall on the same day.

What the national phase is

A PCT application (filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, administered by WIPO) is not a worldwide patent. It's a single international application that preserves your right to seek a patent in over 150 contracting states, and buys you time before you have to commit to specific countries. That commitment happens at national-phase entry: the point at which you file into each individual patent office — or a regional office like the EPO — translate the application if required, and pay that office's fees.

Until you enter the national phase in a country, the PCT application has no local effect there. Entering is how the international application becomes a live case in each jurisdiction.

When is the deadline?

The deadline is counted from your earliest priority date — the date of the first application the PCT claims priority from — not from the PCT filing date. (If the PCT claims no priority, it runs from the PCT international filing date instead.)

• 30 months — the standard deadline for most offices, including the United States (USPTO).
• 31 months — the deadline at a number of offices, including the European Patent Office (EPC Rule 159) and several others.
• 20 or 21 months — a small, shrinking group of offices still apply a shorter period unless a demand for international preliminary examination (Chapter II) was filed in time. Check each country individually.

Because the clock in every country runs from the same priority date but the limits differ, a single PCT family produces a cluster of deadlines around the 30–31 month mark — not one date. Each one is a separate filing in a separate office, often requiring a separate local agent and translation.

What entering actually requires

National-phase entry is rarely a single click. Depending on the office, it typically involves some combination of:

• Filing the entry request and paying the national/regional filing fees.
• A translation of the application into an official language of that office, where the PCT wasn't filed or published in one.
• Appointing a local representative or agent, which most offices require for foreign applicants.
• Follow-on steps after entry. At the EPO, for example, entry is followed by a Rule 161/162 communication with its own response deadline, and annual renewal fees begin to accrue.

Because translations and local agents take time to arrange, the practical deadline for starting is weeks before the legal date — not the morning it's due.

What happens if you miss it

Miss the national-phase entry deadline and, as a rule, the PCT application is treated as withdrawn in that country — the application has no effect there and the rights are lost. Many offices offer a reinstatement or restoration remedy where the failure to meet the deadline was unintentional or (in stricter offices) unavoidable, but it is discretionary, tightly time-limited, and carries fees. It is a last resort, not a plan. Treat the entry date as hard.

The failure mode is almost always the same one that costs patents generally: the date lived in one person's calendar, or in a spreadsheet nobody re-checked, and the family slipped between the firm handling the PCT and the local agents who were supposed to file. A missed deadline is rarely a legal problem — it's a tracking problem.

How to never miss a national-phase deadline

• Anchor to the priority date. Record the earliest priority date for the family and calculate 30 and 31 months forward for every target country — the dates differ by office.
• Set an internal deadline weeks earlier to allow for translations and instructing local agents.
• Track the follow-on actions too — EPO Rule 161/162, first renewals, and each office's post-entry steps — not just the entry date itself.
• Keep one view across all your firms. When different agents handle different countries, the single biggest risk is fragmentation — no one holding the whole picture.

That's exactly what IP Axix is built for: it reads your US and European portfolio directly from the USPTO and EPO, calculates the statutory deadlines for you, and reminds you before each one. Book a 20-minute walkthrough to see it on your own cases.

Related reading

• When does a patent expire? — the full lifecycle and every deadline that keeps it alive.
• Missed a patent deadline? — what it means and what options you may have.
• EPO renewal fees — the annual fees that begin after European entry.
• What is patent docketing? — how teams track every date across a family.

This article is general information and not legal advice. PCT time limits, available remedies and local requirements vary by office and change over time; always verify critical dates against the official WIPO and national/regional patent-office record and confirm them with your patent attorney.