EXCO/IT25/RES/002
STRENGTHENING THE PRACTICE OF THE INDEPENDENT IP ATTORNEY
www.ficpi.org
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Resolution of the Executive Committee, Naples, Italy
13 and 16 October 2025
“Controls on Foreign Filing of Patent Applications”
FICPI
, the International Federation of Intellectual Property Attorneys, broadly
representative of the free profession throughout the world, assembled at its Executive
Committee at the World Congress held in Naples, Italy, 13 to 17 October 2025, passed
the following resolution:
OBSERVING
that as part of the process involved in filing patent applications (including
those relating to designs and utility models), countries have a legitimate interest in
controlling the dissemination of information that is relevant to State security, and
therefore some countries impose limitations on the first filing of such patent
applications;
RECOGNISING
that restrictions relating to the first filing of patent applications are
typically in relation to, or in addition to, national legislation relating to state security and
export control, but can impact applications which are not relevant to State security;
NOTING
that to date more than 30 countries have made such restrictions known to
potential applicants, such as those summarised on the WIPO webpage entitled
“International applications and national security considerations”
FURTHER NOTING
that for those more than 30 countries at least 6 different criteria are
known,
such as
1) any inventions made in the country,
2) any applications filed by nationals of the relevant State,
3) any applications filed by residents of the relevant State,
4) any applications by natural persons having a residence in the respective country,
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EXCO/IT25/RES/002
STRENGTHENING THE PRACTICE OF THE INDEPENDENT IP ATTORNEY
www.ficpi.org
2
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2
5) any applications by legal persons having a principal place of business in the
respective country and - independently of the preceding criteria -
6) applications containing State secrets;
OBSERVING
that it is common for inventors from multiple countries to collaborate on
devising an invention, and therefore an applicant wanting to first file a patent application
may need to fulfil multiple legal requirements, which are in fact not solvable due to their
conflicting nature;
FURTHER OBSERVING
that such situations which are not solvable due to conflicting legal
requirements are less likely to arise on applications containing State secrets due to the
need to consider and comply with national security legislation in advance when working
on such technology;
NOTING
that in addition to the above, the tailoring of a customised application strategy
for each case concerned is time consuming and cost intensive, hindering timely and
efficient protection of inventions of the applicant;
URGES
countries
to consider
A) limiting those restricting criteria to only those cases possibly disclosing inventions
related to State security;
B) publishing information in which IPC classes the possibility of such a State security
secret can be expected with a reasonable probability;
C) reducing the number of different criteria through harmonisation of such
requirements when essential;
D) providing easy, rapid and cost-efficient procedures to obtain a decision on
conducting the first filing outside of the jurisdiction concerned; and
E) providing simple, rapid and cost-efficient procedures to allow for remediation in
cases in which a first filing contrary to certain national legislation has been
conducted.
[End of document]