According to the first paragraph of Article 36 of the Patent Law, when requesting substantive examination, an applicant for a patent for invention shall submit reference materials related to his invention before the filing date. These reference materials mainly refer to the technical materials related to the invention referred by the inventor in the process of completing the invention, including patent documents, scientific and technological books, patent technology newspapers and periodicals, etc. Applicants can choose the materials most closely related to the invention and send them to China National Intellectual Property Administration.
The second paragraph of this article stipulates that: if an application for a patent for invention has been filed in a foreign country, the Patent Office may require the applicant to submit the materials retrieved in that country for examining its application or the materials for examining the results within a specified time limit; If the application is not submitted within the time limit without justifiable reasons, the application shall be deemed to have been withdrawn. In this clause, the retrieved information refers to the retrieval report made by the patent offices of the countries and regions concerned on the application and the international retrieval report made by the International Bureau of PCT Treaty on the international application. The examination result information refers to the concluding comments made by the patent offices of relevant countries and regions on the application, such as the notice of examination opinions made by foreign patent offices, the decision to grant patent rights, the decision to reject patent applications, etc.
When an inventor makes an invention-creation, he can't provide background materials without referring to any information, so he can explain it clearly to the examiner by submitting an opinion statement.