Keywords: patent application; Chemistry; Problems; suggestion
I. Introduction
At present, the number of invention patent applications in China is second only to that in the United States and Japan, making it a veritable patent application country. In 2005, the number of patent applications by China residents reached 93,000, an increase of 42. 1% over 2004, ranking first in the world. From 1995 to 10 in 2005, the number of patent applications filed by China residents increased by more than eight times. According to Li Yuguang, deputy director of China National Intellectual Property Administration, the number of patent applications accepted in China is increasing by 30% every year. By the end of 2007, the number of invention patent applications in China has jumped to the third place in the world.
Although the number of patent applications in China has increased substantially in recent years, people's awareness of patent protection still needs to be continuously strengthened, and the professional quality of employees in patent agencies still needs to be greatly improved in order to fundamentally improve the level of patent protection in China. Compared with the rapid development of oil refining and chemical industry in China, the corresponding patent protection is relatively backward. In addition to the late implementation of the patent system in China, an important reason is that the chemical field has great particularity compared with other fields, which increases the difficulty of patent protection in the chemical field.
This particularity in the field of chemistry is reflected in the following aspects: firstly, it is reflected in the complexity of process conditions. As far as a chemical process is concerned, there are not only many technological parameters and influencing factors involved, but also cross each other. Secondly, it is often difficult to predict whether chemical inventions can be realized, and it must be confirmed by experimental results. Thirdly, the structure of some chemical products is still unclear and must be determined by performance parameters and/or preparation methods; In addition, the discovery of new properties and new uses of a chemical product does not mean the change of its structure or composition, so it cannot be regarded as a new product [1]. Therefore, it is difficult for beginners who have just started to engage in the patent agency industry to write patent application documents in the chemical industry, and they will encounter many problems in actual operation.
Two. Common problems in writing patent application documents in chemical field
Compared with other fields, the problems encountered in writing patent application documents in the chemical field are similar and special. Here are some common questions:
(a) the preliminary retrieval work is not comprehensive, the closest existing technology has not been found, and the background technology is not accurately written, which leads to the increase of communication time with the examiner after submitting the patent application documents and the delay of authorization time.
(2) The technical scheme is not fully disclosed, and the key components or experimental steps are omitted or replaced by self-made codes, which makes it impossible for technicians in this field to implement the invention according to the contents of the specification, thus leading to the rejection of the patent application.
(3) It is novel and creative to tell the whole process of the invention and write the experimental scheme or process exactly, but even if the patent is granted, the scope of protection will be very narrow. Moreover, some innovations that could have been protected as technical secrets are also made public together, which is not worth the loss and harms the interests of the applicants.
(four) can not distinguish the necessary technical features. * * * has technical features and distinctive technical features, which are collectively called necessary technical features. Because the closest technology has not been found, it is impossible to demarcate accurately. Therefore, when writing the independent claim, we don't know which technical features should be kept and which should be written in the dependent claim, which leads to the limited protection scope of the independent claim or the lack of necessary technical features, which makes the technical scheme incomplete.
(5) Examples are insufficient or only written as conditional experiments. It is precisely because of the complexity of inventions in the chemical field, many influencing factors, many variables, and sometimes insufficient examples, which do not take into account all the technological conditions or numerical ranges of formulas in the claims, so examples can not support the claims well. In addition, sometimes the agent directly uses the conditional experimental data provided by the inventor when writing the embodiment, that is, only one variable is changed at the same time, and other factors remain unchanged, thus obtaining an experimental result. The disadvantage of this embodiment is that others can easily see the changing law of the experiment from the conditional experiment. Although patent disclosure is in exchange for protection, our principle is to exchange moderate disclosure for maximum protection. Therefore, to avoid this situation, it is best to change multiple variables together.
(6) The description of the invention effect is not sufficient, and there are no convincing test data and methods, only assertions. Although in order to unify the examination standards, the examination guide defines a virtual person who has mastered all the existing technologies in this field but is not creative, that is, a technician in this field [2], even so, the examiner will be more or less influenced by subjective factors in the process of examining the case. Therefore, when describing the good effect brought by the invention, it is necessary to fully expound it from all aspects in order to convince the examiner that the invention is creative.
Three. Some suggestions on writing patent application documents in the field of chemistry
The following suggestions should be helpful for writing high-quality patent application documents.
(1) Because the field of chemistry belongs to the field of experimental science, there are many factors that affect the achievements of the invention. Therefore, in the process of writing documents, we should pay attention to the writing of examples. The embodiment must be sufficient, and the data of the embodiment must be consistent with the data of the claim. When there is a data range, at least one embodiment should support two endpoint values and an intermediate value. Generally speaking, we should be able to understand how the invention is implemented and judge whether it can be implemented and achieve the said effect within the scope defined by the claims.
(two) on the basis of giving consideration to the novelty and creativity of the invention content, we should pay attention to the protection of technical secrets. For the patent application in the chemical field, the formula and process conditions of the catalyst or composition should be properly disclosed, that is, under the premise of ensuring that the technicians in this field can implement the invention according to the contents disclosed in the manual and at the same time have novelty and creativity, other process and technical features can be kept confidential as technical secrets and will not be disclosed.
(3) We should not simply pursue the number of patent applications. Under the condition of fully searching the existing technologies, we should ensure that single technical solutions should be combined as much as possible to save costs.
(4) When writing claims, we should be good at extending the scope of protection from point to surface. When the applicant submits his invention to the patent agent, in most cases, only one embodiment is given. When writing an independent claim, if it is limited to this specific mode, its protection scope will often be too narrow. When others implement it, as long as they make slight changes, they may bypass the protection scope of this independent claim without infringement. Therefore, the agent needs to analyze and clarify the essence of the invention, try to write an independent claim with a general description, and then supplement sufficient examples to win the maximum rights for the inventor. For example, in the embodiment, styrene, vinyl toluene, 1, 3- dimethylstyrene, 2,4-dimethylstyrene, ethyl styrene, p-tert-butylstyrene, α-methylstyrene and other substances can all be used to play the same role, so these substances can be summarized as aryl vinyl monomers at this time, and the protection scope can be expanded from point to point.
(5) An invention that transfers a known chemical substance or a known technology/method to other aspects belongs to a new-use invention. When making a creative judgment on the transferred invention, we should first consider the distance between the new use and the technical field of the existing use, and whether the new use can bring unexpected effects. Only when the new use is far away from the technical field of the existing use, and the new use has achieved unexpected invention effects, can the invention be considered creative at this time.
Four. Concluding remarks
This paper lists the problems often encountered in the practice of patent agency, but it is far from these. Especially for an enterprise patent worker, we should always focus on the interests of the enterprise, strengthen the training of business knowledge, effectively improve our business ability, and avoid making similar mistakes and causing undue losses to the interests of the enterprise.
References:
[1] Wu Guanle. Patent Agency Practice [M], Intellectual Property Press, 2007
[2] review guidance [M]. China National Intellectual Property Administration, People's Republic of China (PRC), Intellectual Property Press, 2006