March 30, 2021

Novelty is one of the three requirements for patent application to be authorized. In practice, such a situation often occurs: an invention with great practical value and high degree of creativity, but because the inventor does not understand the patent authorization requirements, he or she publicly discloses the technical scheme before the application date, resulting in the relevant application is rejected by the patent examination department because it does not meet the novelty.

To avoid this regret, here are three specific scenarios to look at how prior art in patent law is disclosed.

Scene one: Should new research results be published first, or patented first?

New research results should be applied for a patent before academic papers are published. In this way, under the circumstances of complying with the provisions of the Patent Law, it can not only obtain authorization protection, but also will not affect the subsequent review and publication of relevant academic papers.

Scene two: Is the new product of enterprise research and development to participate in the exhibition first, or apply for the patent first?

If the patent is pre-empted by malicious competitors after being publicly displayed at the exhibition, it will cause great losses to the real patentee.

Therefore, the enterprises participating in the exhibition should apply for patent for invention or exercise patent priority in China for the exhibits that have applied for patent abroad to obtain patent protection before participating in the exhibition.

Scene three: Does publishing information in the circle of friends count as public in advance?

WeChat Moments has gradually evolved into an important platform to promote products. In order to achieve sales purposes, salesmen usually automatically apply foWeChatB1 friends and set it as visible to all people in Moments. Subjectfully, they also hope that mWeChatBBB2 friends can forward and promote the information after it is published. In this case, the circle of friends has the possibility of infinite spread. Thus constitutes disclosure in the sense of patent law.

Source: Intellectual Property Beijing