Preliminary examination is a stage of patent examination, which includes all patent applications for inventions, utility models and designs. The preliminary examination mainly examines whether the application documents are legal, whether there are substantial defects and the payment of fees.
Telephone notice, called the first notice of examination opinions, is the first notice issued by the patent office examiner in view of the problems existing in the patent application documents, which can be issued in the preliminary examination stage of the invention or in the substantive examination stage. If there are no formal and substantive problems with the patent application documents, they may not receive the phone call.