1. Pre-case search: the applicant communicates with the patent agent about the basic technical scheme of the invention, and the agent conducts a pre-case basic search to find out whether the same or similar patented technology has been published in the patent database of China National Intellectual Property Administration Patent Office, China; Applicants can also search in the databases of several national patent offices themselves.
Note: The search should cover all countries in the world. In order to obtain authoritative retrieval results, the applicant may entrust the Literature Retrieval Center of China National Intellectual Property Administration Patent Office to conduct paid retrieval, so as to obtain more authoritative retrieval results.
2. Writing of application documents: If the retrieval results are satisfactory, the applicant will provide technical disclosure and entrust a patent agency to write the application documents. The patent agent will write the application documents with the maximum protection scope according to the requirements of the patent law and the invention content of the applicant, and the patent agent will communicate with the applicant for confirmation, which usually takes about 3-4 weeks;
3. Declaration of application documents: After writing the application documents, the patent agent submits the application documents after being confirmed by the applicant, and gets an electronic acceptance notice the day after submission.
4. Novelty and creativity examination: The Patent Office conducts a substantive examination of the patent application documents, which takes about 10 months, and issues a power of attorney after the examination is passed;
5. The applicant goes through the formalities of obtaining a patent certificate: the patent agent informs the applicant to pay the patent authorization fee and pays the fee on his behalf;
6. Patent certificate: get the patent certificate about 2 months after payment.
The whole process lasts about 10 ~ 14 months, and the specific time depends on the specific patent application field, the examination speed of the examiner and the informative degree of the applicant's public materials.