August 2021

Filing a patent application starts at the Patent Office. With a patent application you start a procedure that leads to legal protection of your new technical invention. A patent application comprises the description of the invention with all the details of the invention to which the patent application relates. A patent application is sometimes confused with a patent itself. The difference is that a patent application is a request to obtain a patent, but does not yet have the status of a granted patent.

A national patent application can be extended to an international patent application so that patent law can also become valid in more countries than just the country where the first patent application was filed. Conversely, a first patent application can also be filed directly via an international patent treaty (European Patent Treaty or Patent Cooperation Treaty). This leads to a bundle of national patent rights. Depending on the economic or scientific importance that an applicant attaches to his invention, national or international patent protection will be chosen as you can read from https://kulturehub.com/inventhelp-step-by-step-guide-inventor/.

Why Are You Applying For a Patent?

Companies that invest in product development and also purchase knowledge for this through the hiring of experts will draw up a policy to properly protect the new knowledge they generate. Without protection, the competitor could easily get away with the results of years of research. The choice to protect that knowledge by means of a patent application is then an obvious one. There are patent agencies that provide help for new inventors and they can be hired for the patent application as well.

However, this does not always happen because in some technology areas the developments go so fast that it makes no sense to file a patent application. The technology has already been further developed before the filed patent becomes valid. In that case, patent protection is lagging behind. Secrecy is then a solution, although it entails the risk of leaks, corporate espionage or a clever competitor who happens to make the same invention.

All considerations that an inventor makes about whether or not his knowledge is protected by a patent application fall under the concept of patent policy. One of the most important decisions is the route of the patent application. National and then international or vice versa?

Patent application can be classified into National Phase Application, convention application, Patent of Addition, simple patent application, and divisional patent application. A National phase application has to be filed within 31 months from the priority date. The priority date is either the international filing date or the date when the application has been filed in the convention country (whichever is earlier).

As far as convention application is concerned it has to be filed within 12 months from the date of priority with further grace period of six months at the discretion of the Controller of Patents. A divisional application is filed when a particular patent application in question speaks of two inventions, but it is filed at the discretion of the applicant.

A patent of addition is nothing but an addition or continuation of patent application already filed, but it is supposed to be filed before the grant of patent of the original one. A simple patent application is one which is filed without claiming any priority and is basically the inventions from USA. You can always get help from professionals like InventHelp.

Patent Application Process

As stated aforesaid a PCT application is required to be filed into National phase within a span of 31 months but to precede further a Request for first Examination in form 18 is required to be filed within 48 months from the priority date and agencies like InventHelp could be helpful in this step.

Once the request has been filed, an examination report pertaining to the same is issued by the Patent office. After that the applicant has to apply either for a hearing or file a reply pertaining to the examination report within a span of one year from the date of issue of the said report. The Examiner then issues a notice asking the agent of the applicant to appear before him for clearing doubts pertaining to the application in question.

Once the application gets through, it is published in the journal for opposition and if the same is not opposed within 3 to 4 months it gets registered. The same process is applied for all the patent applications. It is to be noted that examiner or controller will never examine the patent application unless a request is made in the patent office in the prescribed manner along with requisite fees.