What is the impact of voluntary patent withdrawal?

Before the patent is published or announced, the applicant's withdrawal application will not lose its novelty (to be corrected here, the inventor has no right to request withdrawal, only the applicant has the right to withdraw).

Paragraph 2 of Article 22 of the Patent Law stipulates that novelty means that the invention or utility model does not belong to the prior art; No unit or individual filed an application for the same invention or utility model with the administrative department for patent in the State Council before the filing date, and it was recorded in the patent application documents published or announced after the filing date.

Although your company applied for a patent, it voluntarily withdrew it before the patent was published, so it is neither prior art nor conflicting application. Therefore, the novelty of subsequent applications will not be affected.

The patent application has not been published, so it cannot be used as the existing technology in the patent examination database. Therefore, your company can continue to apply in the future.