According to the review procedure stipulated in China's Patent Review Guide, any unit or individual that directly submits a patent application to a foreign country may file a request for confidentiality review with China National Intellectual Property Administration, and submit the request documents including the request and the technical scheme specification. China National Intellectual Property Administration examiners make a preliminary examination of the application documents. If the technical scheme obviously does not need to be kept confidential, the examiner will soon issue a notice informing the applicant that he can file a patent application for the technical scheme to a foreign country. For the technical scheme that may need to be kept confidential, the examiner will also inform the applicant in time to suspend the submission of patent applications to foreign countries, and inform the requester whether the technical scheme can be submitted to foreign countries within the specified time.
There are two ways to submit confidential review:
1, one is the applicant's active request;
2. Others shall be determined by the Patent Office.
Specifically, the first way is that if the technical content of a patent application involves national security or major national interests, the applicant can make a confidentiality request when filing a patent application, or before the application for a patent for invention enters the preparation for publication (or before the application for a patent for utility model enters the preparation for authorization announcement).
The second way is that before the classification of patent applications, the patent office will select patent applications whose invention content may involve national security or major national interests, and hand them over to the patent office to determine whether it is necessary to keep them confidential.