The term of the invention patent is 20 years; The term of utility model patent and design patent is 10 year, counting from the date of application.
After the design patent is granted, no unit or individual may exploit its patent without the permission of the patentee, that is, it may not manufacture, promise to sell, sell or import its patented product for production and business purposes.
This article is protected by the patent law. As can be seen from its wording, the real starting date of protection is from the date of application; So that is to say, the real protection date is not ten or twenty years, but less than this time. The termination date is also mentioned in China's patent law. In any of the following circumstances, the patent right shall be terminated before the expiration of the time limit:
(a) failing to pay the annual fee in accordance with the provisions;
(2) The patentee waives his patent right in writing. In these two cases, the patent terminates, and of course there is a third case, that is, the patent expires and the protection naturally terminates. Then we finally concluded that the protection period of a patent is shorter than the patent period, the starting date is the patent application date, and the termination date depends on the patentee, but the longest time is the termination date of the patent period.
Patent right refers to the exclusive right granted by the state to the inventor or designer within a certain period of time in accordance with legal procedures on the premise that the content of the invention is open to the public and the invention has legal interests to the society. Patent is a kind of intellectual property, so it also has the characteristics of intellectual property, that is, timeliness, regionality, impersonality and exclusiveness. Timeliness means that the exclusive right of the patentee is only valid within the legal time. After the expiration of the time limit, the patentee no longer enjoys the exclusive right to the invention-creation, and the invention-creation originally protected by law becomes social public wealth that any unit or individual can use for free.
In Article 42 of the Patent Law of People's Republic of China (PRC), the term of the invention patent right is 20 years, and the term of the utility model patent right and the design patent right is 10 years, all of which are counted from the date of application.