The date of patent application is of great legal significance: it determines the time of filing the application, and when there are multiple applications with the same content, the order of application determines who will be granted the patent right; It is the date standard to judge whether the invention is novel or not, because it determines the retrieval period of the existing technology; This date is also the beginning date of a series of important periods in the examination procedure and the patent protection period after the patent application is authorized. The applicant's rights will also be "temporarily protected" from the application date until the authorization, and the application with the same theme after the application date will lose novelty because of its conflict and cannot be granted a patent right.
Legal basis: Article 42 of the Patent Law of People's Republic of China (PRC).
The term of patent right for invention is 20 years, the term of patent right for utility model is 10 year, and the term of patent right for design is 15 year, all of which are counted from the date of application.
Where a patent for invention is granted for four years from the date of application for a patent for invention and three years from the date of request for substantive examination, the patent administration department of the State Council shall, at the request of the patentee, compensate for the unreasonable delay of the invention patent in the process of authorization, except for the unreasonable delay caused by the applicant.
In order to compensate for the time occupied by the review and approval of new drugs, the patent administration department of the State Council shall compensate the patentee for the patent term of new drug-related invention patents that have been approved for listing in China. The compensation period shall not exceed five years, and the total effective patent right period after the new drug is approved for marketing shall not exceed fourteen years.