In the process of examination and approval of a patent application, the examiner shall be responsible for keeping confidential the unpublished or announced patent application documents, other contents related to the patent application and other information that should not be disclosed.
(B) the principle of written review
The examiner shall conduct the examination on the basis of the written documents submitted by the applicant, and notify the applicant in writing of the examination opinions (including the notice of correction) and the examination results. In the preliminary examination procedure, in principle, no meeting will be held.
(3) the principle of hearing
Before making a rejection decision, the examiner shall inform the applicant of the facts, reasons and evidence on which the rejection decision is based, and at least give the applicant the opportunity to state his opinions and/or modify the application documents. When the examiner makes a rejection decision, the facts, reasons and evidence on which the rejection decision is based shall have been informed to the applicant, and shall not contain new facts, reasons and/or evidence.
(D) the principle of procedural economy
According to the regulations, examiners should strive to improve the efficiency of examination and shorten the examination process. For applications with defects that can be overcome through rectification, the examiner shall conduct a comprehensive review and point out all defects in a rectification notice as far as possible. For an application with substantial defects that cannot be overcome by correction, the examiner may not examine the application documents and other documents in form, but only point out the substantial defects in the notice of examination opinions.
Examination procedure for inventions in patents: (1) passed the first trial.
After preliminary examination, the application documents conform to the relevant provisions of the Patent Law and its detailed rules for implementation, and there are no obvious substantive defects in the patent application, including those that meet the requirements of preliminary examination after correction, which shall be considered as qualified in the preliminary examination. The examiner shall issue a notice of preliminary examination, indicating the application text on which the publication is based, and then enter the publication procedure.
(2) Correction of application documents
In the preliminary examination, the examiner shall conduct a comprehensive examination of the patent application with defects that can be overcome through correction in the application documents, and issue a notice of correction. The notice of correction shall specify the defects in the patent application, explain the reasons and specify the time limit for reply. If the application documents are still defective after being corrected by the applicant, the examiner shall issue a notice of correction again.
(3) Treatment of obvious substantive defects
In the preliminary examination, the examiner shall issue a notice of examination opinions on the patent application that has obvious substantive defects and cannot be overcome by means of correction. The notice of examination opinions shall indicate the substantive defects of the patent application, explain the reasons and specify the time limit for defense.
For the substantive defects in the application documents, it is only necessary to point out and deal with them if they obviously exist and affect the disclosure.
(four) the reply to the notice