1. Application for U.S. patent procedures: When submitting an application, the application fee, search fee, examination fee and materials required for application processing must be paid together, otherwise, a late fee will be incurred; After the application is submitted, USPTO will issue a formal receipt and immediately see the main information of the case, such as the application number; In addition, the United States has special requirements for claims settlement. If there are multiple citations, additional costs will be incurred: 780 dollars for large entities, 390 dollars for small entities, and 195 dollars for micro entities. If it is cited many times, it will not be accepted by USPTO. Therefore, when entering the United States, people will need to make preliminary amendments to their claims according to the provisions of the American patent law to avoid additional costs or. If the existing technology is mentioned in the specification, PCT retrieval report or review comments, it must be made into IDS and submitted to USPTO. If IDS is not submitted, the authorized patent evaluated as "intentional deception" may be invalid in the future when the patent validity is involved;
2. The procedure for applying for a US patent is open: it will be completely automatic within 65,438+08 months from the application processing date or priority date after approval, or completely open within 65,438+08 months from the application processing date as required by the applicant;
3. Apply for formal examination of US patent procedures: After the formal examination is passed, USPTO will issue a formal official acceptance notice;
4. The actual examination of the application for patent in the United States: the examination opinions are usually issued within 12 to 18 months. If rejected, the applicant must give a reply within 3 months from the date of receiving the notice. The applicant can explicitly request an extension of the time limit, which can be extended for up to 3 months; When the United States applies, it generally receives the review opinion of 1-2. If the review opinion can't be resolved and is finally rejected, you can choose to reply again (the probability of passing is low) or submit a reply and RCE (somewhat similar to the review in China, except that RCE does not limit the number of times. After the application fee is paid, USPTO will review it again, with the same steps as the new case) or request an appeal.
5. Apply for patent registration in the United States: If no reason for rejection is found after examination, a notice of authorization will be issued, and the applicant shall go through the patent registration formalities and pay the registration fee within three months from the date of receiving the notice.
6. In the process of applying for examination of the patent procedure in the United States, if some claims can be authorized, they can also be authorized first, and unauthorized claims can be submitted to a continuation application (CA) to continue to argue with the examiner. If the applicant needs to add new substantive content during the application process, he can submit a partial continuation (CIP), and the newly added content does not enjoy the priority of the parent case. CA and CIP must be submitted before the parent case pays the authorization fee, and the application fee is the same as the new case. There is a separate patent certificate after authorization (it can be subsidized by government departments as an independent patent in China).