I. Accepting patent applications and conducting patent form examination.
When applying for a PCT patent, the applicant must state in which member countries the application is valid. These designated countries are called "designated countries".
If the Chinese Patent Office, as the PCT acceptance bureau, considers that the patent application documents and procedures are complete, it shall determine the international application date. The international filing date means that since the filing date, the PCT international application has the same effect as an ordinary domestic application in each designated country, and the filing date has also become the actual filing date in that designated country.
The PCT Acceptance Bureau will formally review the international PCT application documents, and after passing the examination, it will send the international PCT application documents to the International Bureau of the World Intellectual Property Organization and the international retrieval unit respectively.
Second, international retrieval
After the PCT patent application is submitted, China Patent Office, as an international search unit, will search the PCT patent application and make an international search report within the specified time. The search report will be sent to the PCT patent applicant and the International Bureau of the World Intellectual Property Organization as soon as possible within the specified time.
After 18 months from the date of international application (or priority date), the International Bureau will publish the PCT international patent application and the search report made by the international search unit, and send the application together with the search report to the patent office of the designated country required by the PCT patent application.
Three. International preliminary examination
The Patent Cooperation Treaty stipulates that the international preliminary examination procedure is not mandatory. If the countries participating in the treaty are bound by Chapter II of the PCT, the applicant may request the international preliminary examination unit to conduct an international preliminary examination of its application.
The purpose of international preliminary examination is to put forward preliminary opinions on whether the invention is novel, creative and practical. This review opinion is not binding on each designated country. The standard stipulated by PCT is the current international standard, and the review opinions are made by a few international preliminary examination units on the basis of international search, so the report should be more reliable and reliable.
When participating in patent cooperation treaties, some countries are not bound by Chapter II of PCT. When the applicant requests the international preliminary examination, he can only select some countries that use the results of the international preliminary examination from the designated countries bound by Chapter II of the PCT, and these countries are called "selected countries".
After examining the international application as an international preliminary examination unit, China Patent Office submits the international preliminary examination report to the International Bureau of the World Intellectual Property Organization, which forwards it to the applicant, and the International Bureau also sends the international preliminary examination report to the "selected country" for application.
Four. National review stage
When the international patent application is completed in the international stage, within the specified time, the PCT patent applicant will enter the domestic examination stage of each country according to the country designated at the time of application or the country selected at the time of requesting preliminary examination. Whether the PCT patent application can obtain the patent of the designated country or the selected country will be examined and decided by each designated country or the selected country.