This March, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court (the court) held that the deadline for claiming domestic priority is when an applicant completes registration formalities (i.e., pays required fees) and not later, when SIPO actually grants a resulting patent. In an administrative trial ((2015) JingZhiXingChuZi No.:2822), Richtek Electronics Co., Ltd. (Richtek) sued the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) based on a Notification that a claim to priority in a later-filed application was deemed not to have been made since the later-filed application was filed after payment of fees but before grant of the parent application.
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Meirong Cao
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Filing Utility Model (UM) and Invention Patent Applications Simultaneously in China
By Meirong Cao & Aaron Wininger on
Filing UM and Invention Simultaneously in China
For “products” (generally, mechanical inventions), Applicants can file both a utility model (UM) and invention patent simultaneously[1].The advantage of filing both UM and invention patent applications is that the UM will grant quickly (usually within 6 – 12 months since not substantively examined) thereby providing some patent protection while the invention patent application is undergoing examination, which can take several years. Note though UMs are only valid for 10 years from filing and do not protect methods. Invention patents are generally considered more valuable than UMs since they last 20 years from filing and have a broader protection scope (i.e., can claim methods).
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