Preliminary patent applications may appear in Russia

The Federal Service for Intellectual Property of the Russian Federation (Rospatent) is working to change the legislation on the use of patents in Russia. In particular, an initiative is being considered to introduce a so-called “provisional patent application”, which, according to specialists of the Ministry, may be useful for revitalizing the situation with the use of intellectual property results (RID) and will provide additional benefits to inventors and investors.

In early August of this year. The Office circulated a letter in which it asks to express the opinion of various specialists on the advisability of introducing the institute of a preliminary patent application in Russia.

A provisional patent application is a free-form document (a sample of which is not even regulated), which allows the author to secure the priority right to an intellectual property object — patent for an invention, utility model or “know-how” without going through established patent procedures. To submit a preliminary application, you must pay a small fee, and the collection of such applications will most likely be carried out electronically. The advantage of the provisional application (in addition to the emergence of priority on the day of its execution) is the legislative possibility of obtaining a non-patent license according to all the rules of payment and protection of the authors of the invention, as well as a 12-month moratorium on filing a patent according to all the rules established in the Patent Law. At the same time, such opportunities are provided only in the case when the author disclosed the technical essence of his invention at a sufficient level of detail.

A preliminary application may be useful for venture projects, where the interests of the investor can be fixed at the stage of its formation. This can significantly speed up the implementation of the project - after all, a startup is in fact either fast or dead. Also, a preliminary application can be a tool for assessing the quality of the RID, its relevance and even give an emotional and psychological impetus to the author in continuing to improve his invention.
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Much, however, is still not clear. How will such requests be received and recorded, can such a request be withdrawn, amended or supplemented. While these issues are not discussed. However, it is nice that the changes in the Patent Law before their adoption were decided to be discussed with the public and experts. For some tragic reasons, I got into the list of such experts and I think that with certain modifications, the institute of preliminary applications would be useful in Russia. At the same time, I decided to ask the opinion of this from the respected Habr community. Therefore, my friends, do not take the trouble to answer a small survey or leave your comment, the results of which I ask permission to refer to in my expert reply to the request of Rospatent on the feasibility of introducing preliminary patent applications in Russia.

Have a nice day, everyone!