Based on the provisions of WIPO Standard ST.26, all Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications which include biological sequence listings to be filed electronically in extensible markup language (XML) format, and it will be fully implemented as of July 1, 2022.

As the Receiving Office of WIPO, the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ) requires that the PCT applications filed by ePCT filing system must use the XML format conforming to Standard ST.26. IPONZ recommends the patent application whose filing date is after July 1, 2022, including New Zealand’s general patent applications, applications claiming priority under Paris Convention and PCT national phase applications, shall adopt the sequence listing mentioned before. Divisional applications should be filed with the same sequence listing as that of their parent application.

Applicants can convert a sequence listing from another format to Standard ST.26 and include it with the patent applications at any time during the patent examination, which will be treated as a voluntary amendment to the complete specification and the normal rules for an amendment will apply. For such an amendment, it is recommended that either specific statements of support are provided for all sequences, or a statement is provided which explicitly advises that the amendment does not introduce new matter.

From Tai E International Patent & Law Office

June 2022