The Patent Cooperation Treaty has attempted to guarantee that applying for a patent will work in exactly the same way no matter what country you are applying for the patent in (within the scope of the United Nations network of countries). When the Patent Cooperation Treaty was signed into law it made more people feel safe to invent and patent their invention because they knew their patents would apply not only to the one country they invented it in but to several countries all over the world. Intellectual properties are so easily stolen these days that this law although it was signed into being before the Internet is a big deal to many.