Since the number of claim items of a patent application and the number of pages of the description and drawings directly affect the amount of work of the examiner, additional filing fees, i.e., excess claim fees and excess...more
I. Background Introduction - In recent years, the number of foreign patent applications entering China exhibits a steady growth on a yearly basis. Foreign applications are required to be translated to Chinese in order to...more
Dividing a single patent application into multiple patents is often essential for deriving maximum economic benefit from the disclosed inventions. When an applicant wants to protect multiple inventions disclosed in a single...more
Provisional patent applications became available on June 8, 1995 in response to the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (the GATT treaty) whereby applicants in the United States are able to establish an early filing date by...more
The United Kingdom, Japan and Norway, are all members of both the Patent Cooperation Treaty and the Paris Convention. The British Patent Office acts as the Receiving Office for the United Kingdom, the Japanese Patent Office...more