The patents are granted by the national patent office of respective country. An applicant who wants to be granted multinational patents may make application for a regional patent under the "Paris Convention" or with any other regional patent organizations (such as the European Patent Office, the Eurasian Patent Organization, African Intellectual Property Organization, etc.). An applicant may also apply for an international patent under the "Patent Cooperation Treaty" (PCT, Patent Cooperation Treaty) administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization. In addition, in order to assist an applicant making an exact application according to his market expansion plan, Sino Corp also provides service for patent registration in more than 170 oversea countries/regions.

Types of Application

Different countries/regions have different categorization for patents. For example:

• China：Patent for Invention, Patent for Utility Model and Patent for Appearance Design
• Hong Kong：Standard Patent, Short-term Patent, Registration of Design
• The United States：Patent for Invention, Patent for Appearance Design and Plant Patent
• Japan：Patent for Invention, Patent for Utility Model and Patent for Appearance
• Europe：Patent for Invention, Patent for Appearance

Required Documents

• Name of the invention
• Name and address of the applicant
• Name and address of the inventor
• Type of patent
• The application date and the application number of the International stage and the type of patent to be applied for
• Power of attorney
• Applications documents from the International application^*

Application Procedures

• Determination of the application types
• Submission of the application (International stage)
• International search and examination
• Submission of the international application (National stage)
• Acceptance of the patent
• Issuance of the certificate

Term of Validity

Different countries have different rules and protection period for the patent, generally 20 years for Invention patent and 10 years for Utility model patent.

Applications documents from the International application^* include:

• Claim: it is the most important document among the patent documents and it describes the protection scope of the patented technology
• Abstract: it provides the outline of the key technical aspect of the patent
• Specification: it provides written details and features of the patented technology
• Drawings: it illustrates structures and details of the patent by drawings