How many ways can foreigners apply for patents? How to proceed?

With the promotion of the Belt and Road policy, it is no longer impossible for foreigners to set up companies to do business in China. But as a foreigner, how many ways do you want to apply for a patent in China? After all, it is still different from the direct application of domestic people. Let Bian Xiao, Bajie's intellectual property, tell you. How many ways are there to apply for a patent? Most people don't know, let alone foreigners? Can foreigners apply for patents in China? Foreigners, foreign enterprises or other foreign organizations with habitual residence or business offices in China shall enjoy the same rights as China citizens and enterprises when applying for patents in China. Foreigners, foreign enterprises or other foreign organizations that have no habitual residence or business office in China apply for patents in China. According to the agreement signed between their countries and China, there are three situations: 1. The agreements mentioned here mainly refer to the bilateral agreements signed between China and other countries. If the agreement stipulates that natural persons, enterprises and organizations of the other party are allowed to apply for patents in their own countries, it shall be handled in accordance with this provision. 2. It shall be handled in accordance with the international treaties to which the country to which it belongs and China are parties. China has acceded to the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property and the Convention for the Establishment of the World Intellectual Property Organization. Both treaties stipulate that member countries should allow each other to apply for and obtain patents and implement the principle of national treatment. Therefore, China should grant national treatment to citizens, legal persons or other organizations that are parties to the above two conventions who apply for patents in China. 3, in line with the principle of reciprocity. The principle of reciprocity, also known as the principle of reciprocity, means that if a country allows its citizens, enterprises and organizations to apply for and obtain patents in that country, then China also allows its citizens, enterprises and organizations to apply for and obtain patents in China. How many ways are there to deal with patents? There are two ways to apply for a patent: direct application and agency application. Direct application means that the applicant directly mails or submits his application documents to the acceptance office or agency of China National Intellectual Property Administration Patent Office. When applying for a patent, the applicant shall directly submit or mail the application documents to the reception office of China National Intellectual Property Administration Patent Office (hereinafter referred to as the reception office of the Patent Office), or the offices of China National Intellectual Property Administration Patent Office in Beijing, Shenyang, Jinan, Changsha, Chengdu, Nanjing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Xi, Wuhan, Zhengzhou, Tianjin, Shijiazhuang, Harbin, Changchun and Kunming (hereinafter referred to as the offices of the Patent Office). The national defense patent application is specially accepted by the National Defense Patent Branch. Agency application means that the applicant entrusts a patent agency to handle the application procedures. Because writing patent application documents is a highly technical and legal work, in order to fully and properly protect the applicant's inventions, it is best to entrust a patent agency to apply for a patent. The examination and approval procedures and cycles of invention patents are different from those of utility models and designs. Invention patents should go through the stages of acceptance, preliminary examination, early publicity, substantive examination and authorization announcement. Utility models and designs only go through three stages: acceptance, preliminary examination and authorization announcement. Therefore, the approval period of invention patents generally takes 3-5 years, and the approval period of utility models and designs generally takes half a year to 1 year. To apply for a patent abroad, an applicant shall first apply to the China National Intellectual Property Administration Patent Office, and with the approval of the relevant departments in the State Council, entrust a foreign-related patent agency designated by the State Council to act as an agent, and hold a priority certificate issued by the China National Intellectual Property Administration Patent Office. You can apply for a patent directly to the Patent Office of one country, or you can apply for a patent to many countries through the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) procedure. Since 1 99465438+1October1,China has become a signatory to the PCT, and China National Intellectual Property Administration Patent Office has become a PCT acceptance bureau, an international retrieval unit and an international preliminary examination unit. Anyone who applies for a patent abroad through the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) may directly submit an application to the China National Intellectual Property Administration Patent Office, and the examination and approval period is 30 months. To sum up, we can know that it is not impossible for foreigners to apply for patents directly, but it needs to involve the administrative examination and approval system in China, and it is even more difficult for foreigners to apply for patents in China. Another way for foreigners to apply for a patent in IN is to find a corresponding agency, which is quite convenient.