1. What are involved in the preliminary examination?
The preliminary examination of a utility model application mainly involves formal examination and examination on obvious substantive defects, and the latter includes examinations of subject matter to be protected, novelty, practicability, unity, clarity of the claims, and the support of the description, the description sufficient disclosure, etc.
2. Examples of common problems in formal examination
There are no expressions of “be characterized by” or similar terms in the independent claims and dependent claims, the title of utility model is not inclusive of all subject matters in the claims, the abstract of the description does not include the title of the utility model, and the technical contents in the claims are not described in the description, and so forth.
3. The examination of the novelty
Examiners can examine whether a utility model application apparently has no novelty in accordance with the information obtained from related prior art or conflicting applications. There are situations of substantively the same technical content, implicit disclosure, or merely simple literal conversion in novelty examination, for example, the differences merely are direct replacement of conventional means in the technical field, which destroy the novelty of the claims.
4. The examination of subject matter to be protected
Utility model patent can protect only for products, so all processes and objects which exist naturally and are not made by man are not the subject matters to be protected by the utility model patent. The claims may include the name of known method to define the shape or structure of a product, and shall exclude the steps or processing conditions of the method. If a claim also involves the improvements to the method or material itself, it does not belong to the subject matter to be protected by utility model patent.
(1)Examination of computer programs in claims
Regarding computer programs, if the claim apparently involves only improvements of computer programs itself, not involving hardware improvements, it belongs to method which is not the subject matter to be protected by utility model patent. If the claim not only involves improvements of hardware but also those of computer programs, it does not belong to the subject matter to be protected by utility model patent either. If the improvements to prior art in the claim are merely the hardware parts, and relevant computer programs are simple programs known to the skilled in the art or conventional applications of the known computer programs, rather than improvements to computer programs themselves, the claim belongs to the subject matter to be protected by utility model.
(2)Examination of material features in the claim
Regarding material features, the molecular structure, components, metallographic structure etc. of a substance do not belong to the subject matter to be protected by the utility model patent. Rather, the name of known material may be included in the claims.
(3)Examination for layout planning application
Layout planning application, including architectural layout planning, placement and combination, gardening, such as residential buildings, modular sofas, and plant planting structure etc., is characterized in that the connection between the whole and constituent parts of the product is completed by artificial planning but not through technical means. The applications of merely artificial planning usually do not belong to the subject matter to be protected by utility model patent. If the technical means is adopted to solve specific technical problems and thus a technical solution is constituted, the subject matter should be protected by utility model patent.
