Submit application: submit patent application documents to the State Patent Office, including requests, specifications, claims, etc. Before submitting the application, patent search should be carried out to ensure the innovation and practicability of the application.
Acceptance by the Patent Office: After receiving the application, the Patent Office will accept the application that meets the acceptance conditions and issue an acceptance notice and a payment notice. The applicant shall pay the application fee within the prescribed time.
Preliminary examination: The Patent Office conducts a preliminary examination of the application, mainly to examine whether the application documents are complete and meet the requirements of the Patent Law. If problems are found, a correction notice will be issued, requiring the applicant to make corrections.
Substantive examination: If the preliminary examination is qualified, the Patent Office will conduct substantive examination of the application, mainly to examine the innovation, practicality and industrial applicability of the application. In the substantive examination stage, the applicant may need to reply to the notice of examination opinions, explain and defend the defects.
Authorization and announcement: If the substantive examination is qualified, the Patent Office will grant the patent right and issue the patent certificate. At the same time, the Patent Office will publish the authorized patents in official website.
The time for applying for an invention patent varies with the review system in different countries and regions. Generally speaking, it may take several years from submitting an application to obtaining authorization. The specific examination time and authorization time will also be influenced by factors such as technical field, innovation degree and examiner's subjective judgment. Therefore, when applying for an invention patent, we need to wait patiently and actively cooperate with the examiner's review requirements to ensure that the application can be successfully authorized.