Questions about patents

What is a patent?

Patent is the abbreviation of Patent Right, that is, the state grants the inventor or his successor the exclusive use of the right within a certain period of time in accordance with the law. the rights to their inventions and creations. A patent is a legal system that enables applicants to profit from their inventions.

Within the time and geographical scope of patent protection, no unit or individual may exploit its patent without the permission of the patentee, that is, it shall not manufacture, use, offer for sale, sell, or import for production and business purposes. Its patented products, or the use of its patented methods and the use, offering to sell, selling, or importing products directly obtained according to the patented methods.

In order to obtain a patent, the applicant must disclose the contents of his invention to the public, and once the patent rights expire, the invention becomes a publicly known technology and can be used by others without charge.

During the patent protection period, the patentee has exclusive rights to the invention and can make profits by implementing, transferring or licensing it himself.

Types of patents

Invention patents are new technical solutions proposed for products, methods or their improvements, and are protected for 20 years; utility models refer to the shape, structure or other aspects of a product. Combining the proposed new technical solutions suitable for practical use, the protection is for 10 years; appearance design refers to the new aesthetically pleasing and suitable for industrial application made on the shape, pattern or combination of the product, as well as the combination of color, shape and pattern. Designed and protected for 10 years. The above deadlines are calculated from the date of application and cannot be renewed upon expiration.

Which inventions and creations can be patented?

The inventions and utility models applied for patents must be novel, creative and practical at the same time, and the appearance applied for patents must be novel and aesthetic. In addition, patents need to define the scope of their protection in clear and concise legal language.

The invention for which a patent is applied does not have to be a completely new and pioneering invention. Improvements to existing products or methods are also patentable. The content of patents is all-encompassing, penetrating into various fields such as machinery, electronics, communications, medicine, chemistry, biology, agriculture and forestry, from household appliances to spacecrafts, Chinese herbal medicine formulas to gene therapy, from light-emitting diodes to supercomputers... It can be said that everything is not Inventions and creations that fall into the following categories may become patentable.

Which inventions and creations cannot be patented?

Inventions and creations that violate national laws, social ethics or harm public interests will not be protected by patents in any country.

Scientific discoveries, methods and rules of intellectual activities, methods of diagnosis and treatment of diseases, animal and plant varieties, substances obtained by nuclear transformation methods, etc. are all categories that are not allowed to be authorized under the express provisions of my country's patent law.

In addition, unimplementable inventions such as perpetual motion machines cannot be authorized. Literary, artistic works, musical works, film and television works, etc. are not protected by patents, but can be protected by copyright. Trademarks, logos, slogans, and other characteristic marks that distinguish the source, origin, and manufacturer of goods can be protected through trademark law, and generally there is no need to apply for a patent.

Who can apply for and own a patent?

Inventors or designers of non-service inventions and units responsible for service inventions have the right to apply for patents and obtain patent rights.

Service inventions and creations refer to inventions and creations that are completed while performing the tasks of the unit or mainly by utilizing the material and technical conditions of the unit.

For inventions and creations completed by utilizing the unit’s material and technical conditions, if the unit has a contract with the inventor or designer and stipulates the right to apply for a patent and the ownership of the patent right, such agreement shall prevail.

An inventor or designer refers to a person who has made creative contributions to the substantive features of an invention. In the process of completing an invention and creation, a person who is only responsible for organizational work, a person who facilitates the utilization of material and technical conditions, or a person who engages in other auxiliary work is not the inventor or designer.

Patent search

Searching the content of the invention can help the applicant determine whether the content already belongs to the prior art or is common knowledge. Searches can usually be conducted at a patent office, an agency or on the Internet.

Although computer search can help applicants filter out a lot of valuable information, due to the large amount of documents and language restrictions of applicants, it is usually impossible to search documents from countries with small languages, so only relying on This approach is not yet foolproof. Patent search results can only provide a reference, but they are also valuable.

Patent review

Every patent application must be reviewed by a patent examiner before it can be granted or rejected. Usually the preliminary examination and substantive examination procedures take 1 to 3 years, depending on the type of patent application, the content of the invention, and the time it takes to respond to the examination opinions. Additional fees are required for substantive examination of invention patents, patent authorization, publication and printing, and not all patents can be authorized.

Purposes of patents

Patents are the only protection an applicant can have to prevent others from stealing his invention. Only after the patent is granted can the applicant exercise its rights. A patented invention cannot legally be manufactured, used, offered for sale, sold or imported without the consent of the patentee.

Patents are a type of property right that can be sold, transferred, licensed, inherited, or used as intangible assets for investment and financing.

Exercise rights

Only after the patent is authorized, the applicant can exercise the rights, and then the applicant becomes the patentee. The provisional protection of an invention patent starts from the date of publication of the patent application (usually 18 months from the filing date). If the claims after authorization are consistent with the claims at the time of publication, the patentee has the right to provide temporary protection to others. Litigation for infringements carried out at various stages. This also explains why many applicants are willing to disclose the content of their inventions in advance to obtain provisional protection early.

Once a patent is authorized, it is an infringement for others to use, manufacture, offer for sale, sell or import the patented product without the permission of the patentee, and will be punished by law.