1. Submission phase
When submitting an application, the following documents shall be submitted: application, claim, abstract, specification, attached drawings (if any), proof of payment of application fee, identification of the applicant, proof of priority (if any), etc.
2. Review stage
After accepting the application, the Patent Office will submit the application for national defense examination. According to French law, patent applications must go through national defense examination to confirm whether the invention involves French national interests.
3. Preliminary search
After comprehensive review, INPI entrusts the European Patent Office (EPO) to conduct patent retrieval according to the applicant's retrieval application, and after receiving the retrieval report of EPO, it conducts a simple novelty review on the application, and then sends the preliminary retrieval report and patent review opinions to the applicant.
4. Apply for publicity
After receiving the patent application 18 months, INP will publish the application documents, including the preliminary search report (if applicable) in the official gazette of industrial property rights. Within 3 months after the application is made public, anyone can raise objections to the contents of the official gazette to INPI and list other documents not mentioned in the preliminary search report.
5. Final retrieval
After the applicant exchanged opinions with INPI by email and made possible amendments to the claim, INPI compiled the final search report. At this point, the document review stage is over.
6. Authorization phase
After the applicant pays the license fee, INPI will publish the authorization announcement in the official gazette of industrial property rights and issue the patent certificate with the application number to the applicant.
The registration of French invention patents takes about 2 years from the date of application, and the protection period is 20 years from the date of application. After the French invention patent is granted, the annual fee needs to be paid from the date of application, otherwise the patent is invalid.
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