1. Generally, 20 days a month, provide a disclosure letter and entrust an agency to write application documents (this step can be omitted if there is no entrusted agency);
2. Submit the application documents, get the notification of acceptance from the Patent Office, determine the application date, and submit an early public statement and request substantive examination on the day of submission, which can speed up the examination process;
3. The Patent Office will formally review the patent application documents for about 2-3 months, and enter the public preparation stage after the first trial is passed;
4. It takes about 6-8 months for the Patent Office to publish the invention application documents;
5. The time for the Patent Office to substantially examine the invention patent documents is about one and a half to two years, during which the examiner communicates with the applicant on the substantive content of the invention, namely novelty, creativity and practicality (entrusting the agency to communicate with the agency to determine the appropriate scope of protection of the invention), and this communication can be repeated many times until it is revised to the satisfaction of the examiner;
6. Letter of authorization issued by the Patent Office;
7. The applicant shall go through the formalities for obtaining the patent certificate;
8. The whole process of obtaining a patent certificate after about 2-3 months lasts about 2.5 to 3 years, and the specific time depends on the examination speed of the examiner and the informative degree of the applicant's public materials.
Legal basis: Article 51 of the Detailed Rules for the Implementation of the Patent Law of People's Republic of China (PRC), when making a request for substantive examination, an applicant for a patent for invention may voluntarily propose amendments to the application for a patent for invention within three months from the date of receiving the notice that the application for a patent for invention has entered the substantive examination stage issued by the patent administration department of the State Council.
An applicant for a patent for utility model or design may, within 2 months from the date of application, put forward amendments to the application for a patent for utility model or design.
Where the applicant modifies the patent application documents after receiving the notice of examination opinions issued by the patent administrative department of the State Council, it shall modify the defects pointed out in the notice.
The patent administration department in the State Council can correct the obvious errors of words and symbols in the patent application documents by itself. Where the administrative department for patent in the State Council modifies it by itself, it shall notify the applicant.