How to apply for a confidential patent

when applying for a patent for an invention-creation that involves national security and needs to be kept confidential, all units in the national defense system should submit it to the patent agency established by the competent department of national defense science and technology. The patent office will examine such applications and make comments. Other patent applications shall be filed directly with the Chinese Patent Office. When the applicant applies for a confidential patent or requests a confidentiality review in accordance with the relevant national confidentiality regulations, he shall mark "√" in the column of "Confidentiality Request" in the request. After accepting this kind of patent application, the Patent Office will handle the application according to the confidential procedure. The application for a patent for invention-creation that needs to be subject to confidentiality review shall be transferred to the ministries, commissions, bureaus or head offices directly under the jurisdiction of the industry in the State Council for review. The above-mentioned competent authorities shall, within 4 months from the date of receiving the above-mentioned application documents, examine whether the application needs to be kept confidential, and notify the Patent Office of the examination results. After examination by the competent department, any application for a patent for invention-creation that needs to be kept confidential shall be treated as a confidential patent by the Patent Office, and the applicant shall be notified. Any application for a patent for invention-creation that does not need to be kept confidential shall be examined and handled by the Patent Office according to the examination and approval procedures for general patent applications, and the applicant shall be notified. It should be noted that only the invention patent request has the column of "Confidentiality Request". An application for a patent for utility model or design cannot make a request for confidentiality.