From January 7, 2025, Uruguay will officially become a member state of the PCT, and international applications filed on or after January 7, 2025 will automatically designate Uruguay.
However, Uruguay has chosen to reserve Chapter II of the PCT Treaty, which means that if the only applicant of a PCT application is a resident of Uruguay or all applicants are Uruguayan nationals, they will not be eligible to request international preliminary examination for their international application. Uruguay has thus become the only contracting state to make this choice. Therefore, if an applicant from Uruguay wishes to have his international application enter Chapter II and undergo international preliminary examination, he can only choose one way, that is, to include applicants from other countries besides Uruguay as co-applicants.
By the time Uruguay joins the PCT, the number of PCT member states will have grown from the initial 12 in January 1978 to 158 when Uruguay joins on January 7, 2025.
