How to speed up the examination of invention patents?

 

 

 

1、 Submit high-quality patent application documents

 

 

 

High quality patent application documents can effectively avoid formal errors and reduce or avoid the issuance of the Office Action or the Letter of Correction at the preliminary examination stage; It also saves the time period for replying to these notices, effectively shortens the time for preliminary examination, and the application documents will be directly qualified in preliminary examination after they are submitted.

 

 

 

In the actual review process, the application documents have clear ideas, smooth writing and comprehensive introduction to the technical proposal, which will also enable the reviewers to understand the content of the technical proposal more quickly; Shorten the time it takes for the examiner to understand and retrieve the patent, accurately and objectively judge whether the innovation meets the requirements, reduce the number of times the Office Action is issued, and shorten the actual examination cycle.

 

 

 

2、 Timely handling of priority review

 

 

 

The Administrative Measures for Priority Examination of Patents (hereinafter referred to as the "Measures") has been officially implemented since August 1, 2017.

 

 

 

According to Article 10 of the Measures, "Where the State Intellectual Property Office agrees to give priority to the examination, the case shall be closed within the following period from the date of consent: (1) The application for a patent for invention shall issue a notice of examination opinions within 45 days, and the case shall be closed within one year...".

 

 

 

"Priority examination" may be made when the invention application meets the conditions for substantive examination after it has submitted a request for substantive examination and paid the corresponding fee.

 

 

 

The submission of the request for "priority examination" shall meet one of the following six conditions. In addition to the fifth point, the request for priority examination shall be signed by the relevant department of the State Council or the provincial intellectual property office for recommendation:

 

 

 

1) It involves energy conservation and environmental protection, new generation information technology, biology, high-end equipment manufacturing, new energy, new materials, new energy vehicles, intelligent manufacturing and other national key development industries;

 

 

 

2) Industries that involve the key encouragement of provincial and municipal people's governments;

 

 

 

3) Involves the Internet, big data, cloud computing and other fields, and the technology or product update speed is fast;

 

 

 

4) The patent applicant or the applicant for reexamination is ready for exploitation or has started exploitation, or there is evidence to prove that another person is exploiting his invention creation;

 

 

 

5) Where a Chinese application for a patent is filed in China and another country or region is filed for the same subject matter;

 

 

 

6) Other matters of great significance to national interests or public interests need to be examined first.

 

 

 

Documents required for "priority review":

 

 

 

1) Request for priority examination;

 

 

 

2) Existing technology or existing design information materials and relevant supporting documents;

 

 

 

3) In addition to the above point (5), the letter of request for priority examination shall be signed by the relevant department of the State Council or the provincial intellectual property office;

 

 

 

4) If the applicant is an enterprise, a copy of the business license affixed with the official seal shall be uploaded.

 

 

 

It is worth noting that according to point 23 of the announcement on the revision of the Guidelines for Patent Examination issued by the State Intellectual Property Office on September 25, 2019

 

 

 

Where the same applicant applies for both a utility model and an invention for the same invention creation on the same date (only the application date), the application for a patent for invention among them shall not generally be given priority.

 

 

 

The applicant may, in accordance with the Measures, choose the system of patent priority examination to speed up the examination of invention patents.

 

 

 

3、 Timely reply to the Notice of Examination Opinion

 

 

 

In the process of actual examination of the invention, generally 2-3 notices of opinion will be issued, and the reply time limit for one notice of opinion is 4 months (2 months for priority examination); The time limit for reply to the second notification is 2 months (one month for priority review). After receiving the notification, submit the reply as soon as possible, and the examiner will continue the review as soon as possible to shorten the review cycle.

 

 

 

As the priority examination can only be handled after the invention patent application is published and enters the substantive examination stage, the preliminary examination stage before this cannot be accelerated, and it takes about three months to go through the process quickly; It takes one year to review after priority review, so the whole application process is about one year and three months fast.

 

 

 

4、 Effective Use of Patent Pre examination System

 

 

 

Patent pre examination refers to that the Protection Center provides patent application pre examination for filing applicants, and the State Intellectual Property Office accelerates the examination of patent applications that have passed the pre examination of the Protection Center to shorten the period of patent application authorization.

 

 

 

The patent preliminary examination system is characterized by short examination cycle, non statutory procedures, patent quality oriented, focusing on industry and innovation of new technologies and key links.

 

 

 

The patent preliminary examination can be carried out after the filing is successful. First, submit the application documents to the Protection Center for preliminary examination. After the preliminary examination is passed, submit the application documents to the Patent Office to obtain the application number and pay the fees in time. Go to the Protection Center to submit the application number to speed up the examination and enter the fast examination channel.

 

 

 

At present, China has set up 57 intellectual property protection centers, each of which has its own filing requirements and acceptance scope in the technical field.

 

 

 

The authorization period of cases that have been examined and accelerated in advance will be greatly shortened. The authorization period of invention patents will be shortened from more than 20 months to about 3 months.

 

 

 

It is worth noting that there are certain restrictions on patent applications for patent prequalification:

 

 

 

First of all, the following patent applications shall not be processed through the fast examination channel:

 

 

 

International patent applications filed in accordance with the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), PCT international applications entering the national phase of China, utility model patents and invention patents applied by the same applicant for the same invention creation in accordance with Paragraph 1 of Article 9 of the Patent Law on the same day, divisional applications and applications requiring confidential examination in accordance with Article 7 of the Rules for the Implementation of the Patent Law.

 

 

 

Secondly, if the patent application for invention is subject to "patent preliminary examination" in the Intellectual Property Protection Center, the applicant must submit a reply within 10 and 5 working days respectively to the first and second notice of examination opinions issued by the Patent Office.

 

 

 

If the applicant fails to meet the conditions for authorization after making a reply to the Second Office Action in the substantive examination of the patent application for invention, the patent application will automatically be transferred to the ordinary application procedure.

 

 

 

The applicant may, according to the situation of the invention patent application for which the examination is to be accelerated, apply for patent preliminary examination after filing in the corresponding protection center to speed up the examination progress of the invention patent in China.