Application for Design Patent
To apply for a design patent, you need to prepare a view of the six sides of the product and fill in the Application for Design Patent together with a brief description of the design, and submit the application documents to the State Patent Office.
After submitting the application, you can get the Notice of Patent Acceptance in about a week; the Patent Office will issue the Notice of Grant of Design Patent and the Notice of Registration Procedures in about six months; and the certificate will be issued in about two months after the payment of the patent registration fee and the annual fee.
Utility Model Patent and Invention Patent Application
Utility Model Patent and Invention Patent need to write a good patent specification, together with the patent application submitted to the State Patent Office. Because the patent law provides that the invention patent is applied for after the disclosure of the patent specification for substantive examination, the submission of early disclosure statement is to enter the substantive examination as soon as possible, in order to shorten the patent application cycle. Therefore, the invention patent also needs to submit the "request for early disclosure statement" and "request for substantive examination" two documents.
After submitting an application for a utility model patent, you can get the Notice of Patent Acceptance in about one week; the Patent Office will issue the Notice of Grant of Utility Model Patent and the Notice of Registration Procedures in about six to eight months; and the certificate will be issued in about two months after paying the patent registration fee and annual fee.
After submitting an application for a patent for invention, you can get the "Notice of Patent Acceptance" in about a week;
After submitting an application, you will be subject to the preliminary examination stage, and if you pass the examination, you will disclose the specification of the patent applied for in accordance with the declaration of early disclosure, i.e., enter into the stage of substantive examination; and if you pass the examination, you will be issued with the "Notification of Granting of Invention Patent" and "Notification of Handling of Registration Procedures". After timely payment of fees, the license will be issued in about two months. Invention patent application process takes about three years.
The above three types of patents, if applied for by individuals (limited to individuals in mainland China), can be submitted together with an Application for Fee Mitigation, requesting a mitigation of the application fee and the first three annual fees.