Confidential patent application

A confidential patent is an invention patent that involves national security and interests and needs to be kept confidential. Patent is to disclose its technical content under the protection of law, to protect the interests of the patentee from being infringed by others in a specific region and time, but this should be disclosed and protected without affecting national security and interests. If this premise is lost, you should apply for a secret patent. According to the relevant regulations, those involving national security need to be kept confidential, mainly referring to national defense-specific technologies, which are accepted and examined by the National Defense Patent Branch authorized by the Patent Office; Where the national interests need to be kept confidential, the Patent Office shall accept the confidential patent.

The publicity of these inventions will affect the national defense ability, damage the political and economic interests of the country or weaken the economic and technological strength of the country. For dual-use inventions, applicants should not apply for secret patents if they want their inventions to be popularized and applied. An invention-creation applying for a secret patent does not include utility models and designs.

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Confidential patent

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Patent applications involving national defense interests that need to be kept confidential

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Application for patent for utility model

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Examination and approval process of confidential patent application

(1) Patent applications involving national defense interests that need to be kept confidential.

If the examination is conducted by the National Defense Patent Office, and the reasons for rejection are not found after examination, the Patent Office shall make a decision to grant the national defense patent right according to the examination opinions of the National Defense Patent Office, entrust the National Defense Patent Office to issue the national defense patent certificate, and announce the patent number, application date and authorization announcement date of the national defense patent in the patent bulletin.

If the National Defense Patent Reexamination Board makes a decision to declare a national defense patent invalid, the Patent Office shall publish the patent number, the date of authorization announcement, the number of invalidation decision and the date of invalidation decision in the patent bulletin.

(2) An application for a patent for invention or utility model that involves vital interests other than national security or national defense interests and needs to be kept confidential.

The Patent Office conducts examination and management in accordance with the following procedures. The examiner shall mark the patent application documents that need to be kept confidential and keep them confidential before making a decision on decryption. The preliminary examination and substantive examination of the confidential patent application shall be conducted by the examiner designated by the Patent Office.

For an application for a patent for invention, the preliminary examination and substantive examination shall be conducted on the same basis as the general application for a patent for invention. The confidential patent application that has passed the preliminary examination will not be published, and if the request for substantive examination meets the requirements, it will directly enter the substantive examination procedure. If no reason for rejection is found after substantive examination, a decision shall be made to grant the patent right for confidential inventions, and a notice of granting the patent right for inventions and a notice of going through the registration formalities shall be issued.

The preliminary examination of an application for a patent for utility model shall be conducted on the same basis as an application for a patent for common utility model. If no reason for rejection is found after preliminary examination, a decision shall be made to grant the patent right of confidential utility model, and a notice of granting the patent right of utility model and a notice of handling the registration formalities shall be issued.

The authorization announcement of confidential patent application only publishes the patent number, application date and authorization announcement date.