What Is the Single Audit?

The unitary examination means that according to Article 31 of the Patent Law of the People's Republic of China, an application for an invention or utility model patent shall be limited to one invention or utility model. Two or more inventions or utility models that belong to one general inventive concept may be filed as one application. That is to examine the unity of patent applications. The unity examination is a necessary part of the patent examination process, and the patent application should meet the unity requirements. The unity can be divided into the unity of a design patent application and the unity of an invention or utility model patent application.

Unitary review

Right!

According to Article 31 of the Patent Law of the People's Republic of China:

An invention or utility model patent application shall be limited to one invention or utility model. Two or more inventions or utility models that belong to one general inventive concept may be filed as one application.

An application for a design patent shall be limited to one design. Two or more similar designs for the same product, or two or more designs for products in the same category and sold or used in sets, may be filed as one application.

The main reasons why a patent application should meet unity requirements:

(1) Economic reasons: In order to prevent the applicant from paying only one patent, he is protected by several different inventions or utility models.

(2) Technical reasons: To facilitate the classification, search and examination of patent applications.

The lack of unity does not affect the validity of the patent, so the lack of unity should not be used as a reason for a patent to be invalid.

Unitary review

Examination of unity of design patent application

1. More than two similar designs of the same product

According to Article 31, paragraph 2, of the Patent Law, two or more similar designs of the same product may be filed as one application.

There may not be more than 10 similar designs in one design patent application. If there are more than 10 items, the examiner shall issue a notice of examination opinion. If the applicant fails to overcome the defects after the amendment, the patent application shall be rejected.

(1) The same product

According to Article 31 (2) of the Patent Law, each design in an application shall be the design of the same product, for example, the design of a dining plate. If each design is the design of a dining plate, dish, cup, or bowl, although the products belong to the same category in the international design classification table, they do not belong to the same product.

(2) Similar appearance design

According to Article 35 (1) of the Implementing Rules of the Patent Law, other designs of the same product shall be similar to the basic designs specified in the brief description. When judging similar designs, other designs should be compared with the basic designs separately.

During the preliminary examination, applications involving similar designs shall be examined for obvious non-compliance with the provisions of Article 31, paragraph 2 of the Patent Law. In general, after overall observation, if other designs and basic designs have the same or similar design features, and the difference between the two lies in local slight changes, the usual design of such products, repeated arrangement of design units, or only In the case of changes in color elements, they are generally considered to belong to similar designs.

2.Appearance design of complete products

Article 35, paragraph 2 of the Implementing Rules of the Patent Law stipulates that two or more designs for products of the same category that are sold or used in sets and have the same design concept may be filed as one application.

(1) Same category

According to Article 31 (2) of the Patent Law and Article 35 (2) of the Implementing Regulations of the Patent Law, one or more conditions for two or more designs to be filed as one application are the two Products with more than one design belong to the same category, that is, products with more than two designs belong to the same major category in the international design classification table.

It should be noted that products belonging to the same general category are not a sufficient condition for a joint application, and they should also meet the requirements of Article 31, paragraph 2 of the Patent Law, concerning the sale or use in sets and belonging to the same design concept.

(2) Sold or used in sets

. Simultaneous sale

Simultaneous sale refers to the design products that are customarily sold at the same time, such as multi-set bedding consisting of bed covers, sheets and pillow cases. Products such as school bags and pencil cases are sold freely for promotion. Although pencil cases are given away when selling school bags, this should not be considered as a customary sale at the same time, and cannot be applied as a complete set of products.

. Simultaneous use

Simultaneous use refers to the habit of using the products at the same time, that is, when using one of the products, Lenovo will be used, so that the existence of another or several products is thought of, rather than the simultaneous use of these Products. For example, coffee cups, coffee pots, sugar bowls, milk jugs, etc. in coffee appliances.

(3) The design concept of each product is the same

The same design concept means that the design style of each product is uniform, that is, the design made for the shape, pattern or combination of color and shape and pattern of each product is uniform.

(4) Similar designs should not be included in complete products

A patent application for a set of product designs shall not include similar designs for one or more products. For example, an application for a design patent for a set of products including a cup and a plate for a meal should no longer include more than two similar designs for the cup and the plate.

For applications that do not meet the above requirements, the examiner shall issue a notice of examination opinion requesting the applicant to amend.

3. The design of the joint application shall have the authorization conditions separately.

It should be noted that, whether it is two or more similar designs involving the same product, or a design patent application for a complete set of products, each of the designs or the design of each product shall satisfy the above-mentioned joint application. In addition to the relevant provisions, there should be other authorization conditions separately; if one of the designs or the design of a product does not meet the authorization conditions, the design or the design of the product should be deleted, otherwise the patent application Cannot be granted patent rights.

Examination of unity of patent application for invention or utility model

1. Review principles

When examining the unity of an application for an invention patent, the examiner shall follow the following basic principles:

(1) To determine whether two or more inventions claimed in a patent application meet the requirements of unity of invention according to the content specified in Article 31, paragraph 1 of the Patent Law and Article 34 of its implementing rules, It depends on whether the substantive content of the technical solutions described in the claims belongs to a general inventive concept, that is, whether these claims include one or more of the same or corresponding specific technical features that make them technically related to each other. This judgment is made based on the contents of the claims, and if necessary, reference can be made to the contents of the description and drawings.

(2) Claims for two or more inventions that belong to one general inventive concept can be written in one of the following six ways; however, two or more independent claims that do not belong to one general inventive concept, even according to the listed six Writing in one of these ways does not allow protection in one application:

(i) two or more independent claims of the same kind that cannot be included in one or more products or methods;

(ii) independent claims for the product and a method dedicated to manufacturing the product;

(iii) independent claims for the product and use of the product;

(iv) independent claims for the product, the method dedicated to the manufacture of the product and the use of the product;

(v) independent claims for a product, a method dedicated to manufacturing the product, and equipment specially designed to implement the method;

(vi) Independent claims for a method and a device specially designed to implement the method.

(3) The above lists six combinations and appropriate rankings of two or more independent or similar claims that can be included in an application. However, the six listed methods are not exhaustive, that is to say On the premise of belonging to a general inventive concept, in addition to the above arrangement and combination, there are other ways allowed.

(4) Evaluate whether two or more inventions belong to one general inventive concept, and it is not necessary to consider whether these inventions are separately claimed in their respective independent claims, or are claimed as the technical solutions selected side by side in the same claim. In both cases, the unity should be judged according to the same criteria. In addition, the order of claims should not affect the judgment of the unity of the invention.

(5) In general, the examiner only needs to consider the unity between independent claims, and there is no lack of unity between the dependent claims and the independent claims to which they depend. However, in the case of a dependent claim that is essentially a dependent claim in form, it should be examined whether it meets the unity requirement.

If an independent claim cannot be granted a patent due to lack of novelty! Creativity, etc., it is necessary to consider whether its dependent claims meet the requirement of unity.

(6) The unity of some applications can be determined before searching the prior art, while the unity of some applications can only be determined after considering the prior art. When the different inventions in an application obviously do not have a general inventive idea, it can be judged that there is a lack of unity before searching. For example, an application includes two independent claims of herbicide and lawn mower. Since there is no identical or corresponding technical feature between the two, it is impossible to have the same or corresponding specific technical feature, so it is obviously not unitary , You can draw a conclusion before searching. However, because specific technical features are technical features that reflect the contribution of the invention to the prior art, they are relative to the prior art and can only be determined after considering the prior art. Therefore, the unity of many applications is often a problem. No judgement can be made until retrieval.

After the application is compared with the prior art, if the novelty or inventive step of the first independent claim is denied, whether the remaining independent claims juxtaposed with it is a general inventive concept should be re-determined.

2.Singleness review method

Before searching two or more inventions contained in an application, it should first be judged whether they are obviously not unitary. If these several inventions do not contain the same or corresponding technical features, or the same or corresponding technical features are included in the conventional technical means in the art, they may not contain the same or corresponding embodied inventions and contribute to the prior art. Specific technical characteristics, and therefore obviously not unitary.

For two or more inventions that do not obviously lack unity, that is, when the unity is judged after searching, the following analysis methods are usually adopted:

(1) Compare the subject matter of the first invention with the related prior art, and determine the specific technical features that reflect the contribution of the invention to the prior art.

(2) Determine whether there are one or more specific technical features in the second invention that are the same as or corresponding to the first invention, so as to determine whether the two inventions are technically related.

(3) If there are one or more identical or corresponding specific technical features between the inventions, that is, there is a technical association, then it can be concluded that they belong to a general inventive concept. On the contrary, if there is no technical connection between the inventions, it can be concluded that they do not belong to a general inventive concept, and then it is determined that they are not unitary.

3. Review the case

(1) Unity of independent claims of the same kind

example 1

Claim 1: A conveyor belt X, characterized by A.

Claim 2: A conveyor belt Y, characterized by B.

Claim 3: A conveyor belt Z, characterized by A and B.

The prior art does not disclose a conveyor belt with features A or B. From the prior art, a conveyor belt with features A or B is not obvious, and A and B are not related.

Note: Claims 1 and 2 do not record the same or corresponding technical features, so it is impossible to have the same or corresponding specific technical features. Therefore, they are not technically related to each other and do not have unity. The feature A in claim 1 is a specific technical feature that embodies the invention's contribution to the prior art. The specific technical feature A is included in claim 3. The same specific technical feature exists between the two and has unity. Similarly, the same specific technical feature B exists between claim 2 and claim 3 and has unity.

[Example 2]

Claim 1. A resin composition comprising a resin A, a filler B, and a flame retardant C.

Claim 2: A resin composition comprising a resin A, a filler B, and an antistatic agent D.

Resin A, filler B, flame retardant C, and antistatic agent D are all known in the art, and the combination of AB does not reflect the contribution of the invention to the prior art, and the combination of ABC forms a difficult to perform with good performance. The combination of the flammable resin composition and the ABD also formed an antistatic resin composition with good performance, and they were novel and creative, respectively.

Note: Although these two claims include the same features A and B, the combination of A, B and AB does not reflect the contribution of the invention to the prior art. The specific technical feature of claim 1 is the ABC combination, claim 2 The specific technical feature of is the ABD combination, which is not the same or corresponding. Therefore, claim 2 and claim 1 are not unitary.

(2) Unity of different types of independent claims

[Example 3]

Claim 1: A high-strength, corrosion-resistant stainless steel strip whose main components are (by weight) Ni = 2.0 to 5.0, Cr = 15 to 19, Mo = 1 to 2 and a balanced amount of Fe, and the thickness of the strip It is 0.5mm to 2.0mm, and its yield strength exceeds 50kg / mm2 when the elongation is 0.2%.

Claim 2: A method for producing a high-strength, corrosion-resistant stainless steel belt, the main components of the belt are (by weight) Ni = 2.0 5.0, Cr = 15 19, Mo = 1 2 and the balance of Fe, the method includes the following process steps:

(1) Hot rolled to a thickness of 2.0mm to 5.0mm;

(2) annealing the hot-rolled tape, and the annealing temperature is 800 ° C to 1000 ° C;

(3) Cold rolling the tape to a thickness of 0.5 mm to 2.0 mm;

(4) Annealing: The temperature is 1120 ° C to 1200 ° C, and the time is 2 to 5 minutes.

Compared with the prior art, a stainless steel strip having a yield strength of more than 50 kg / mm at an elongation of 0.2% is novel and creative.

Note: There is unity between claims 1 and 2. The specific technical feature of claim 1 of this product is that the yield strength at an elongation of 0.2% exceeds 50 kg / mm. The process steps in method claim 2 are precisely the processing methods used to produce stainless steel strips having such a yield strength. Although this is not reflected in the wording of claim 2, it can be clearly seen from the description Therefore, these process steps are specific technical features corresponding to the strength characteristics defined in product claim 1.

Claim 2 in this example can also be written in the form of quoting claim 1, without affecting the unity between them, such as:

Claim 2: A method for producing a stainless steel strip according to claim 1, comprising the following process steps:

(Steps (1) to (4) are the same as described above, and are omitted here.)

[Example 4]

Claim 1. A burner, characterized in that the mixing combustion chamber has a fuel inlet in a tangential direction.

Claim 2: A method of manufacturing a burner, comprising the step of forming the mixing combustion chamber with a tangential fuel inlet.

Claim 3: A method of manufacturing a burner, characterized by a casting process.

Claim 4: An apparatus for manufacturing a burner, characterized in that the apparatus has a device X which causes a fuel feed port to be arranged in a tangential direction on a mixing combustion chamber.

Claim 5: An apparatus for manufacturing a burner, characterized by an automatic control device D.

Claim 6: A method for producing carbon black using the burner of claim 1, characterized in that it includes the step of passing fuel into the combustion chamber from a tangential direction.

The prior art discloses a burner having a non-tangential fuel inlet and a mixing chamber. From the prior art, a burner with a tangential fuel inlet is neither known nor obvious. .

Note: Claims 1, 2, 4, and 6 are unitary, and their specific technical features all involve a tangential feed inlet. However, there is no same or corresponding specific technical feature between claim 3 or 5 and claim 1, 2, 4, or 6, so there is no unity between claim 3 or 5 and claim 1, 2, 4, or 6. In addition, there is no unity between claims 3 and 5.

(3) Unity of dependent claims

For example, an independent claim is a new method for producing cast iron. In a specific embodiment, it is proposed to produce cast iron in a certain temperature range according to said method. In this case, a dependent claim may be written for the temperature range, and even if the temperature is not mentioned in the independent claim, the lack of unity of the dependent claim should not be raised.

It should be noted that in some cases, the dependent claims in the form are actually independent claims, and there may be a problem of lack of unity. For example, claim 1 is a contactor having features A, B, and C; claim 2 is a contactor of claim 1, wherein feature C is replaced by feature D. Since claim 2 does not include all the features of claim 1, it is not a dependent claim, but an independent claim. The unity of independent claims should be judged according to the principle of unity review.

In the case where an independent claim cannot be granted a patent right due to lack of novelty, creativity, etc., there may be a problem of lack of unity between its dependent claims. ^[1]

What Is the Single Audit?

Unitary review

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