The patent laws of different countries have different provisions on the start and end dates of patent rights. For example, the United States and Canada stipulate that it is counted from the date of authorization, while most countries in the world, such as Germany, Australia, the Netherlands, Switzerland and China, count from the date of application. In addition, there are a few countries, such as Japan, South Korea and Austria. , the term of the patent right shall be counted from the date of application for public announcement. The patent laws of various countries have made a general provision on the term of patent right, that is, the term of invention patent right is longer, while the term of utility model and design is shorter. The reason is that the technical and economic value of utility model and design is lower than that of invention, and it should not be too long from the perspective of public interest. In addition, from the perspective of fair value, generally speaking, the first two are not as good as the latter and need more social labor.
Article 45 of China's Patent Law stipulates that the term of the invention patent right is 20 years, and the term of the utility model patent right and the design patent right is 10 years, all of which are counted from the date of application.
What is invalid is the patent, not the technology.