China patents include inventions, utility models and designs. Patent right is a kind of intellectual property right, which is different from tangible property right. It has exclusivity, timeliness and geographical restrictions. Exclusive restriction means that only the patentee can enjoy the right to manufacture, use and sell the same invention in a certain area, and no one else can manufacture, use and sell it without permission, otherwise it is infringement. Time limit means that the patent right is only valid for a certain period of time. After the expiration, the patent right ceases to exist, and the invention protected by it becomes the common wealth of the whole society, and anyone can use it freely. The patent law stipulates the validity period of patent right, and the protection period of invention patent in China is 20 years. Geographical restriction refers to the patent right granted by a country, which is only valid within the effective jurisdiction of the law of the granting country and is not legally binding on other countries. Patents granted by countries are independent of each other.
Whether a patent application can be successfully authorized depends on its novelty, creativity and practicality. Novelty means that before the filing date, no identical invention or utility model was published in publications at home and abroad, used in China or known to the public in other ways, and no identical invention or utility model was applied to the patent administration department in the State Council by others and recorded in the patent application documents published after the filing date. Creativity means that compared with the prior art before the filing date, the invention has outstanding substantive features and remarkable progress, and the utility model has substantive features and progress. Practicality means that the invention can be manufactured or used and can produce positive effects.
After having a basic understanding of patents, let's look at how to apply for patents. Patent application documents generally include patent claims, claims, specifications, abstracts of specifications and drawings. Among them, the patent request is a document that the applicant expresses his wish to request a patent right to the Patent Office, which is usually printed in a fixed format and filled in by the applicant as required. Patent claim is a legal document used to determine the scope of patent protection for invention or utility model. Article 56 of the Patent Law stipulates: "The scope of patent protection for inventions or utility models shall be subject to the contents of the claims. The description and its drawings can be used to interpret the claims. " Whether the subject matter of a patent application belongs to the patentability scope, whether the invention-creation to be protected has the novelty, creativity and practicality necessary for patentability, and whether the behavior of others will infringe the patent right in the future depends on the contents of the patent claim or other directly related contents. Therefore, the claim is the most important part of the invention and utility model file.
Let's focus on the writing of the patent specification. Instructions are used to explain the specific contents of inventions or utility models in detail, and mainly play the role of disclosing the technical contents of inventions and utility models to the public. In addition to the name of the invention, the description usually includes the following five parts: technical field, background technology, content of the invention, description of drawings and specific implementation methods. Among them, the name of the invention should clearly and comprehensively reflect the subject name and invention type of the technical scheme to be protected, and it can be named according to the technical nature or use. Technical field refers to the technical field to which the technical scheme for patent protection belongs, and refers to the specific technical field to which the patent directly belongs or directly applies. In the background technology, the patent applicant shall, to the best of his knowledge, state the development of the existing technology that is most relevant to this patent and is helpful to understand, retrieve and examine its invention-creation, expound the technical problems and difficulties existing in this invention or utility model, quote comparative documents reflecting these background technologies, especially patent documents, and objectively point out the shortcomings and deficiencies of the existing technology. And it is better to compare it with the known technology, so that ordinary technicians with this professional knowledge can understand the function of the invention or utility model at a glance.
The content of invention or utility model refers to the technical problem that this patent can solve and the technical scheme adopted to solve this technical problem. The beneficial effects of this patent compared with the prior art, the so-called beneficial effects, as the name implies, refer to the advantages or advantages brought by the invention or utility model and the benefits obtained by using the invention or utility model. Specifically, the technical problems to be solved in this patent refer to the technical problems that need to be solved in the existing technology, so as to show all the tasks or objectives to be completed in this patent. Another content of the invention or utility model is the technical scheme, which is the core part of the specification and the collection of technical measures adopted by the applicant to solve technical problems or realize patent objectives.
If there are drawings in the specification, the specification text shall include a brief description of each drawing. The attached drawings in the specification are the most intuitive description of the technical scheme of the invention and creation, and their function is to supplement the description of the text part of the specification with graphics, so as to disclose the patent content more clearly and completely. At the end of the specification, there is a concrete implementation, which describes the preferred way to realize this patent in detail, and should be illustrated with examples in appropriate cases to clearly explain how this patent solves technical problems. However, it should be noted that the purpose of listing specific examples is to elaborate the invention in detail, and the scope of the invention is not limited to this.
After learning how to write a patent, most people may still be confused. The patent claim is written too narrowly, for fear that the technical scheme will not be fully protected, and it is written too broadly, for fear that the right will not be obtained. How to grasp this degree? Theoretically, the fewer technical features recorded in independent claims, the wider the scope of patent protection. However, the independent claim must record all the features of the invention, and the features that constitute the invention cannot be omitted. If one feature is missing, the invention will be incomplete, such patent may be declared invalid in the future, or the protection scope may be narrowed only according to the description of the embodiment. The vague description of patent application documents will produce a large technical scope, or may not be fully disclosed. In this case, the patent claim can hardly be fully supported by the specification, and such a patent may be declared invalid in the future. Patent protection is at the expense of full disclosure of the invention. Inventors must pay attention to the word "enough". A sufficient definition is that the inventor has written the instruction to the extent that ordinary technicians can achieve it without creative work. If the instructions are written in detail, there will be many technical details. If these technical details are written as technical features in patent claims, it is obviously inappropriate, and there will be claims with very narrow protection scope. The key technology for inventors to learn is that they must master the method of distinguishing technical details from technical features, be very skilled in technical solutions and claims, and accurately capture the innovation points.