1. Applicant: A patent applicant is a person who applies to the Patent Office for an invention patent. Generally speaking, the inventor, designer and patent applicant are the same person. However, in the following cases, the applicant for a patent is not an inventor or designer:
1) Where another person obtains the right to apply for a patent for invention-creation from the inventor or designer through a contract and applies for a patent. It should be noted that if an inventor or designer transfers his patent application right after filing a patent application, he shall submit the transfer contract to the Patent Office for the record, and the contract shall take effect after being registered by the Patent Office.
2) The successor of the invention-creation obtains the right to apply for a patent for the invention-creation through inheritance. To inherit the patent right being applied for, a request must be made to the Patent Office to change the applicant.
3) The law directly grants the patent application right to others other than the inventor or designer. If the applicant for a service invention-creation is an inventor or designer, the inventor or designer of the company must be a natural person, such as Reese.
Patent agent: refers to the agent who accepts the entrustment of the patent applicant to handle patent affairs such as patent application, transfer, license and invalidation.
Generally speaking, patent agents can only handle patent affairs and cannot handle other legal affairs. Lawyers can only handle legal affairs other than patents, but not patent affairs, because most lawyers have no technical background in science and engineering, do not know the technical information of patents, and have not received special training in dealing with patent affairs.