What is a Provisional Patent Application in India? A provisional specification is filed when an inventor is at the initial stage of his invention. Much more experimentation is to be done and hence it can only be disclosed on a paper. A provisional specification at this stage provides an interim protection and can be filed without any formal patent claims.
The benefits of a provisional patent application are as follows:
- A secured official patent filing date
The date on which the provisional specification is filed is known as the Priority Date. This signifies the temporary security of the invention.
- 12 months to assess industrial viability
From the Priority Date, the inventor gets a time of 12 months to file a complete specification. Within this span of time the inventor can also evaluate the commercial prospective of the invention. This will help him to determine whether it would be wise to go ahead and apply for a Complete Patent Application.
- Cost Effectiveness
A provisional patent filing fee is much less when compared to that of a complete patent filing one. The technical necessities are simplified which means it requires less time and money to prepare a provisional specification.
As soon as the research work is at a stage where the inventor can prove the inventive step with the help of the experimental results, it’s time to file a Complete Specification. It has to be borne in mind that the Complete Specification must be applied within 12 months from the Priority Date or else the patent application would be considered abandoned. Patent Application in India
A Provisional Application filing is completely an optional step. If the inventor is able to furnish comprehensive information regarding his invention, he can directly file a Complete Specification.
A Provisional Specification comprises of the following:
- The title of the invention
- A detailed description of the invention
- The description must contain the field of the invention and the objective of the invention too.
- Provisional Specification does not necessarily contain Claims section.
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