A patent for an invention gives the owner the exclusive right to benefit financially from the practical use of the solution. This means that no company will be able to produce or sell an invention that we have developed without our permission. Inventions that have never been published before or presented at invention trade shows and exhibitions or conferences can be submitted for patent protection. The term of patent protection lasts for a maximum of 20 years, and we have to renew this protection systematically by paying the appropriate fees to the patent office. The area of protection is chosen by the applicant, it can cover only Poland or another selected country, or the protection can be broad and cover Europe or a designated part of the world.
Regardless of the intended scope of protection, the procedure for filing an application for an invention is most often started at the office in the country where the invention was developed. In our case, most of applications are filed with the Patent Office of the Republic of Poland. The documentation necessary to apply for an invention, is prepared by a patent attorney, the patent office offered by MUG is the JWP patent office. To the patent office should be submitted: application for a patent, description of the invention, patent claims, abbreviated description and, if necessary, drawings of the invention. The essence of the patent application is hidden in properly described patent claims, which very precisely specify the subject matter and scope of the protection sought. The patent attorney representing the case sends the application to the office and after that day, we can already disclose the essence of the invention to others, i.e. we can publish or submit the invention to fairs or conferences.
Once the application is filed, the patent office has time to analyze the documents sent. The first stage is a formal examination, during which the office prepares a state of the art report, this is a review of the available patent literature. After about 18 months, the invention is published in the Patent Office Bulletin. In this way, competitors can get acquainted with the essence of our invention and make any objections to the office. In a further stage of the office’s evaluation, a substantive examination takes place. The office’s experts examine whether the applied invention meets the requirements to obtain patent protection, assess whether the solution is new, has the appropriate inventive step and is suitable for industrial application. The entire procedure from the moment the invention is applied for to the moment the patent is granted usually takes 4-5 years. If the office finds no formal or substantive obstacles, a decision to grant the patent is issued. After payment of the fee, a patent number is assigned, the information is announced in the News of the Patent Office, and the owner of the solution receives the patent document and can already enjoy the granted monopoly on the developed solution.