1. Pre-case search: the applicant communicates with the patent agent about the basic technical scheme of the invention, and the agent conducts a pre-case basic search to find out whether the same or similar patented technology has been published in the patent database of China National Intellectual Property Administration Patent Office, China; Applicants can also search in the databases of several national patent offices themselves.
Note: The search should cover all countries in the world. In order to obtain authoritative retrieval results, the applicant may entrust the Literature Retrieval Center of China National Intellectual Property Administration Patent Office to conduct paid retrieval, so as to obtain more authoritative retrieval results.
2. Writing of application documents: If the retrieval results are satisfactory, the applicant will provide technical disclosure and entrust a patent agency to write the application documents. The patent agent will write the application documents with the maximum protection scope according to the requirements of the patent law and the invention content of the applicant, and the patent agent will communicate with the applicant for confirmation, which usually takes about 3-4 weeks;
Schematic diagram of communication in the early stage of invention patent
3. Declaration of application documents: After writing the application documents, the patent agent submits the application documents after being confirmed by the applicant, and gets an electronic acceptance notice the day after submission.
4. Formal examination and disclosure: the Patent Office conducts formal examination of patent application documents for about 2-3 months, and then enters the public preparation stage after passing the preliminary examination; It will be made public around the fourth month;
5. Novelty and creativity review: It takes about 6-8 months for the Patent Office to substantially review the patent application documents (why it is so slow, mainly because the review task is heavy, fewer people live more, and there is still a queue, especially the scene where hospitals queue up to see a doctor). The examiner for substantive examination will specially examine the contents of your patent. He will read the full text of your patent first, find out the innovation points, and then carry out similar literature retrieval before (which can be understood as paper duplicate checking and novelty checking). The general examiner will issue a notice of the first examination opinion to the patent applicant about 8- 10 months after entering the substantive examination. In the notice, the examiner will communicate with the applicant/patent agent in writing on the substantive content of the invention, namely novelty, creativity and practicality, and the communication may go back and forth for 2-3 times until the amendment is satisfactory to the examiner, and then issue a notice of authorization; If the examiner thinks that after 2-3 replies, he still thinks that the patent is not innovative, he will directly reject it and issue a notice of rejection.
6. The applicant goes through the formalities of obtaining a patent certificate: the patent agent informs the applicant to pay the patent authorization fee and pays the fee on his behalf;
7. Patent certificate: get the patent certificate about 1 week after payment.
The whole process lasts about 2-4 years, and the specific time depends on the specific patent application field, the examination speed of the examiner and the informative degree of the applicant's public information.