AP confused on PCT process?

An AP report concludes with the sentence: For a flat fee of 1,330 Swiss francs ($1,166) companies can file a request for patent protection in any or all of the 139 countries that have subscribed to the U.N.'s Patent Cooperation Treaty, avoiding the need to make individual filings in each country.

IPBiz suggests it wise to make one's national stage filings by the 30 (or 31) month deadline, if one seeks patent protection.

The AP was otherwise talking about a decline in the rate of PCT filings: Almost 164,000 international patents [sic: applications] were filed through the World Intellectual Property Organization [WIPO] last year, about 2.4 percent more than in 2007.

During the previous three years international filings grew by an average of 9.3 percent.

***Meanwhile, AP also reports

In recent months the [Consumer Confidence] index has hit its lowest troughs since it began in 1967, and is hovering at less than half its level of January 2007, when it was 87.3.

***TMC News stated:

Filing a patent under WIPO's treaty provides international protection of an invention from all signatory states without the need for multiple applications. [!? Filing a PCT, by itself, conveys NO PATENT PROTECTION, international or otherwise.]

TMC also noted Huawei was the top PCT filer: Huawei Technologies Co., a major telecommunications company based in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province in southern China, filed 1,737 international patent applications under WIPO's Patent Cooperation Treaty in the reporting year, followed by Japan's Panasonic Corp. with 1,729, the report said.