For many people, they subconsciously believe that applying for a patent means granting authorization, and patent applications without authorization are worthless. Especially in China, many policy subsidies are based on obtaining patent authorization as a prerequisite. This further causes many applicants to demand authorization as a prerequisite in their communication with patent agencies, and to extend this to strange phenomena such as pre application novelty checks, including authorization and refunds if not authorized.
For a complete patent strategy, the patents in the application, that is, the patents that have not been authorized yet, especially the patent applications that have been published but have not been authorized in the application, can sometimes have great power.
. Because once a patent is granted, the scope of rights is determined, which is the scope of rights recorded in black and white in the claims. Moreover, in the process of exercising the rights in the future, the scope of authorization can only be compressed and interpreted, and it is basically impossible to expand the interpretation (based on the principle of estoppel). The claims in patent applications often have a relatively large scope, and when competitors search for these patent documents, they cannot determine the final scope of patent protection. They can only expect the enemy to be lenient, and often do not pursue similar projects. In other words, the patent in the application can also play a protective role.
