Submission and acceptance of the hottest patent ap

Submission and acceptance of patent applications

1. The patent law stipulates that the Patent Office of the people's Republic of China (now renamed the State Intellectual Property Office, the same below) accepts and examines patent applications and grants patents to inventions and creations that comply with the provisions of the law

the State Intellectual Property Office is the competent patent department in China, and it is also the only accepting authority that has the right to receive patent applications according to law. When applying for a patent, the applicant shall submit the application documents directly to the Intellectual Property Office (hereinafter referred to as the Patent Office). If the applicant submits the application documents to other organs, units or individuals by mistake, it will not have legal effect in the patent examination and approval procedure

the patent office has set up a patent acceptance office and a patent application acceptance window, and has set up patent office agencies in Shenyang, Jinan, Changsha, Chengdu, Nanjing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Xi'an and Wuhan to receive and accept patent applications and other documents. The address and business scope of the acceptance Office of the China Patent Office and the above-mentioned agency office shall be published by the China Patent Office to the public in the form of announcements

2. Submission of application documents

if you apply for a patent or go through other procedures with the patent office, you can submit the application documents or other documents directly to the application acceptance window of the patent office or any of the above agencies, or you can mail them to the acceptance Office of the patent office or the above agencies. Attention should be paid to the following matters when submitting documents:

(1) the application documents or documents handling various procedures submitted to the patent office should use the forms uniformly formulated by the patent office, and each document should be in duplicate

(2) one form can only be used for one patent application. For example, only one invention can be filled in a patent request for invention, and only one opinion statement can state opinions on one patent application. It is not allowed to fill in a statement of opinion or a patent request for invention with the statements of several applications or several inventions

(3) the applicant of various documents submitted to the patent office shall retain the manuscript to ensure the consistency of the documents filled in during the application approval process, and this can be used as a reference when replying to the examination opinions

(4) if the application document is mailed, it should be sent by registered letter. If you can't send it by registered mail, you can send it by express mail instead of by parcel mail. In addition to the detailed address (including postal code) of the patent office or the agency, the registered letter shall also be marked with "application documents" and "received by the acceptance Office of the patent office" or "received by the patent office" ×× "Collected by the agency"

a registered letter should contain only the application documents or other documents of the same application. When mailing, the applicant shall ask the staff of the post office to stamp the date of the postmark, and shall properly keep the stub of the registration receipt of the registered letter

(5) the patent office does not accept samples, samples or models when accepting patent applications. In the examination procedure, when the applicant submits samples or models at the request of the examiner, if it submits them face-to-face at the window of the patent office, it shall produce the notice of examination opinion; If it is mailed, it shall be indicated on the mail that "it should be examined by" ××× (name) request to submit the model "

(6) when foreigners or foreign units who have no long-term residence or business office in China, as well as Chinese people who have long-term residence or work abroad apply for patents, they should entrust the foreign-related patent agency designated by the Patent Office authorized by the State Council to handle them. The above applicants shall not mail or submit application documents directly to the patent office

units or compatriots in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan should also entrust foreign-related patent agencies or domestic patent agencies to apply for Patents according to regulations, and should not mail or submit directly to the patent office

3. acceptance and acceptance conditions of patent applications

after the patent application is submitted to the acceptance Office of the patent office or each agency, it should first be examined whether it meets the acceptance conditions. For applications that meet the acceptance conditions, the patent office will determine the application date, give the application number, and issue an acceptance notice after verifying the list of documents, notify the applicant and confirm the receipt of the application documents

in case of any of the following circumstances, the patent office will not accept the patent application, notify the applicant and return the application documents at the same time

(1) if the patent application is not filed in the form of situation, or is not written in Chinese, it cannot be accepted. For example, using models, samples, videotapes, magnetic disks or filing patent applications is inadmissible, and untranslated foreign language application documents are also inadmissible

(2) the application documents (including the request) are not typed or printed, or the handwriting is unclear or altered; If the attached drawings or design pictures are not drawn with drawing tools and black ink, or are ambiguous (Design Photos) and altered, they cannot be accepted. For example, drawings and pictures that must be drawn in fine with pencil, and ambiguous photos are not acceptable

(3) the basic application documents are incomplete, such as the patent application for invention or utility model is missing the request, specification (the utility model application is missing the attached drawings), or any one of the claims is missing; An application for a patent for design that lacks any request, picture or photograph shall not be accepted. For example, an application for a utility model patent can not be accepted if only the request, specification and claims are submitted, and no drawings are submitted. However, the examination of acceptance conditions only checks whether the parts of the patent application are complete, and does not examine whether the documents in each part are complete. For example, the instruction manual should have 15 pages, and the applicant has submitted only 1 ~ 3 pages and 5 pages, which can still be passed at the time of acceptance. The acceptance office only indicates the receipt of 4 pages of the instruction manual on the document list. This defect is often irreparable, so the applicant must check carefully when submitting the application documents

(4) if the applicant's name or address is missing in the request, it cannot be accepted. For example, the request is in a non-standard format, with only the name of the invention and the name of the inventor on it, and there is no name and address of the applicant. Because the patent application has no applicant, it cannot be accepted

(5) if the category of patent application (invention, utility model or design) is closed and the experimental machine or equipment suddenly stops automatically, it cannot be accepted if it is unclear or uncertain. For example, the applicant submitted a design request, but did not submit pictures or photos, but submitted a description and drawings. Because the design application does not need to submit a description, it is impossible to determine what patent the applicant is applying for and which patent application should be accepted and examined at the time of examination, so it can only be rejected

(6) nationals or units belonging to countries that have neither agreement or treaty relationship with China nor patent reciprocity will not accept applications submitted to China; Or foreigners or foreign units that do not have regular residences or business offices in China, as well as units and compatriots in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan who fail to go through the application procedures in accordance with the regulations, cannot be accepted. For example, it is inadmissible for a Chinese resident in Hong Kong to send patent application documents directly to the China Patent Office

some defects in the application documents do not affect the acceptance. For example: ① the application documents are typed or printed on white paper according to the required items without the form uniformly printed by the patent office; ② The name of the invention and the name of the inventor are omitted in the request; ③ If there is no signature or seal in the request, or the signature or seal does not produce legal effect, for example, the patent agency signs and seals, but does not submit the patent agency power of attorney at the same time; ④ In addition to the request, if only one copy of the list of other application documents is submitted (two copies of the application documents are required, one of which is used as the list of documents. If only one copy is submitted, the applicant will not get the list of documents). The above defects can be corrected at the examination stage, but the applicant should try to avoid these defects, because the correction often delays the examination procedure. For defects that can be solved in a few minutes before the application, the review process will often be delayed by several months through correction. For the application documents submitted by the applicant of 223 aluminum alloy window personally to the acceptance office or agency office of the patent office, the staff of the acceptance office or agency office will examine whether the application meets the physical conditions of stopover after unloading, and if it meets the acceptance conditions, go through the acceptance procedures on the spot; If the application does not meet the conditions for acceptance, the patent office will return the application documents to the applicant at that time and explain the reasons for rejection. Those who send the application documents to the patent office shall receive the notice of acceptance or rejection from the patent office and the returned application documents within about one month. If the notice has not been received for more than one month, the applicant shall check with the acceptance Office of the patent office in time to avoid losing the application documents or notices in the mail

4. There are two most important legal procedures in the acceptance procedure: one is to decide whether the application can be processed; the other is to determine the application date of the accepted application and give the application number

(1) determination of the application date

the application date has very important legal significance: ① it determines the sequence of submission of applications. According to the principle of first application, when there are applications with the same content, the sequence of applications determines who is granted the patent right; ② It determines the starting point of the search time for the existing technology, which is of great significance in determining whether the application is patentable in the examination; ③ The application date is the starting point of a series of relevant deadlines in the review process

according to the patent law, if the applicant directly submits the application documents to the acceptance office or the agency office of the patent office, after on-the-spot examination, if the application meets the acceptance conditions, the filing date will be determined as the application date

if the application documents mailed by the applicant meet the acceptance conditions, the date of mailing shall be the application date. If the postmark date of the mailed mail is not clear, the postmark date of the mail sent to the patent office shall be the date of application. If the postmark of the mail is not clear, the date of receipt by the patent office shall be the date of filing

(2) change of application date

after the application date is determined, it cannot be changed casually. Only in the following two cases can the application date be changed:

① due to the unclear postmark, the patent office takes the date of receipt as the application date, or when the applicant believes that the application date determined by the patent office is incorrect, the applicant can provide the registration receipt or other evidence of sending the application document and ask the patent office to correct it. The patent office may change the date of application after verification

② for the patent application that has been submitted, if the applicant himself or the Patent Office finds that the description of the drawings is written in the specification, but the drawings are actually not submitted, or the drawings are submitted less or omitted, the applicant may take the initiative to submit the drawings or submit the drawings within the specified time limit after receiving the notice of correction from the patent office. If the appended drawings are submitted as required, the last submission date of the drawings shall be determined as the application date of the application. Where the application date is changed, the patent office shall notify the applicant in time

(3) giving of application number

application number is the code given by the patent office to each accepted patent application, which corresponds to the patent application one by one. Therefore, the application number is the most effective means for the applicant to specify the application when handling various procedures with the patent office

the patent application number in China consists of 9 digits (including characters). It is divided into four sections: for example: 4 the first two digits in the first paragraph indicate the year of filing the patent application, for example, "97" indicates the application filed in 1997; The second paragraph is composed of the third digit, which indicates the type of patent application, "1" indicates the invention (if it is "2" indicates the utility model, "3" indicates the appearance