In PCT Newsletter No. 09/2026, published on 25 September 2026, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) announced a new feature of the PCT Applicant's Guide: when users access the Guide annexes online they can now review an AI-assisted summary of the latest updates, and the feature is being rolled out during September. WIPO added that artificial intelligence is also being used to expand the PCT Guide Updates that are emailed to subscribers every week. The AI-assisted summaries of updates are currently available in English, French and Japanese, and WIPO says they will be offered in eGuide versions in other languages in due course.
On the Guide website, the annex page for the International Bureau (applicable as from 17 September 2026 and last updated on 25 September) already shows a summary of the latest changes in this version at the top, for example that in Annex C the International Searching Authorities available to nationals and residents of the Bahamas have been updated to Brazil and the European Patent Office, together with a link to the full list of changes.
By way of background, the fully electronic eGuide was introduced in 2022 in English and French and extended in July 2026 to Japanese as a pilot, and the Guide is updated virtually every week with information received from PCT Contracting States and Offices.
For companies and firms managing PCT cases in several countries, the value lies in monitoring: the fees, languages, time limits and special requirements of receiving Offices, International Searching Authorities and designated Offices are spread across dozens of annexes, and changes used to be found only by comparing each annex line by line, whereas users can now read the summary first and decide whether to go into the detail.
The AI-assisted summary is, however, a navigation aid rather than a legal text; the annex itself and the official notices of each Office remain authoritative, and the risk of an omission or an inaccurate wording in a summary has to be managed by the user.
J&C recommends that teams managing international patent filings subscribe to WIPO's weekly PCT Guide Updates and build the annex change summaries into their routine checks before national phase entry and when choosing a receiving Office or International Searching Authority; that every change flagged by a summary be verified against the annex text and the official notices before internal procedures or client alerts are adjusted; and that, as the summaries exist only in English, French and Japanese for now, Chinese-speaking users work from the English version and record the date of each check.
Source: www.wipo.int | pctlegal.wipo.int | www.wipo.int
