What is short-term patent acquisition?

The new Hong Kong Patent Ordinance was passed by the Legislative Council 1997 on May 28th and came into effect on June 27th. The new regulations stipulate that Hong Kong will establish an independent patent system consisting of standard patents and short-term patents. The purpose of establishing short-term patents is to protect inventions with short-term commercial value so that applicants can obtain patents as soon as possible. The Registry of the Intellectual Property Department directly accepts short-term patent applications. For short-term patents, the Registry will not conduct substantive examination. As long as the form is qualified, the patent right will be granted. However, when submitting a short-term patent application, the applicant shall also submit a search report on the patent made by the designated search agency. Short-term patents are valid for 4 years and can be renewed for 4 years, counting from the date of filing or priority.

Generally speaking, there is no time limit for filing short-term patent applications in China and Hongkong. However, if you intend to claim priority because you first filed an application in a Paris Convention country or a member region of the World Trade Organization, you must file a short-term patent application in Hongkong, China within 12 months after submitting the first application. If the invention has been published, it is claimed that the publication will not damage the novelty of the invention (Article 109 of the Patent Regulations).

Short-term patent-short-term patent-equivalent to Chinese mainland's utility model patent.

First, submit an application for utility model to the China Patent Office, and then within 12 months after the application date (the deadline for applying for priority), take the application date of China as the priority date, and then submit a short-term patent application to the Hong Kong Intellectual Property Department. Before submitting a short-term patent application, a novelty search (or retrieval) request for an invention or utility model must be submitted to the Chinese Patent Office, and a short-term patent application can only be submitted after obtaining a retrieval report (retrieval report).

Inventors or creators can use China utility model patents and Hong Kong short-term patents to protect their inventions or products in China and Hong Kong respectively.

Hongkong's short-term patent application does not depend on China's invention application or utility model application. Therefore, when an invention or creation only needs patent protection in Hong Kong, it is not necessary to file a similar application with China first, but only to file a short-term patent application with the Intellectual Property Department of Hong Kong. However, before submitting the application, it is still necessary to entrust the Chinese Patent Office to search and obtain the search report.

For the designated China utility model international (PCT) application, the applicant may submit a short-term patent application to the Hong Kong Intellectual Property Department within 6 months after entering the national phase in China.