Prosecuting your Patent Application

Within six months of publication, a formal "Request for Examination" must be filed and an examination fee paid.

The application then goes back to an Examiner who will in most cases issue an "Official Letter" detailing any objections to the application. The only fundamental objections which normally arise are that, in the Examiner's view, the invention is not new, or, if new, is merely an obvious departure from what is already known.

There may then follow a complicated series of discussions between you, us and the Patent Office and it is likely that amendments to your patent specification will be agreed.

On successful completion of the "prosecution" stage, the application is accepted and published again, this time as a granted patent. And finally: Renewals.