patent & trademark attorneys Brno
Patents provide their owners with exclusive rights over a technical invention. Based on a granted patent, the owner may prevent any third party from using the invention, including producing, importing or storing the invention, without their permission. The maximum term of a patent is 20 years following the date of filing.
Are you interested in what the entire patent application process entails and the costs involved in obtaining and maintaining a patent? Learn what needs to be done on your end - and what can we do for you.
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Patents protect inventions which are new (i.e. inventions which have not been publicly disclosed prior to the date of filing of the patent application), inventive (i.e. not obvious to persons skilled in the relevant technical field) and industrially applicable.
A patent can be maintained in force for 20 years following the filing date of the corresponding patent application. To maintain a patent in force, a maintenance fee has to be paid each year.
Some inventions are excluded from patentability, such as mathematical methods, discoveries, aesthetic and art creations, mental acts or inventions contrary to public morality. Exclusions also apply to plant or animal varieties, human body at various stages of its formation and development or processes relating to modification of genetic identity of human beings, cloning or using human embryos for industrial or commercial purposes.
The filing date of a patent application establishes the priority right vis-à-vis third parties with the following effects:
Patent applications are generally published 18 months after the filing date. The publication establishes the right to the protection against infringers of a future patent, the granted patent retroactively protecting the invention back to the publication date of the application.
For a patent to be granted, a substantive examination by the Industrial Property Office has to be carried out. A request for the substantive examination can be filed any time since filing the patent application until 36 months after the filing date. If no request for examination is filed during this period, the application lapses.
The legal effects of the patent begin on the date of publication of the mention of its grant in the Official Bulletin of the Industrial Property Office. A compensation for infringing the rights from the patent may be sought retroactively for the period starting with the publication date of the patent application.
The maximum duration of the patent is 20 years since the date of filing and is subject to the payment of annual maintenance fees. For inventions relating to medicaments and preparations for the protection of plants, a supplementary protection certificate (SPC) can be requested which may extend the patent validity by further 5 years at the most (or 5 and half year in case of pediatric drugs).
Czech patent applications are managed by the Industrial Property Office of the Czech Republic and the territorial scope of the resulting patents is limited to the territory of the Czech Republic.
European patent applications are managed by the European Patent Office (EPO) and the territorial scope of the resulting patents may include up to 40 member states of the European Patent Convention and 6 extension/validation states.
The international phase (incl. filing, search, publication, or preliminary examination) of international applications is managed by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). Upon the termination of the international phase and entry into the national/regional phase, the application is processed individually by the national/regional IP offices of the selected countries or regions.
The examination and grant process is managed by the IP office of the relevant country.