Читать книгу Intellectual Property Law for Engineers, Scientists, and Entrepreneurs - Howard B. Rockman - Страница 143

In many instances, your patent application will be a continuation, continuation‐in‐ part‚ or division of a previously filed related patent application, discussed in Chapter 11, or claiming priority to previously filed provisional patent application. To properly establish the chain of the parent patent application(s) in your present application, it is necessary to place a statement in your current patent application referring to these earlier applications of which the present application is a family member. This sets forth the continuity of these patent applications, and allows later filed patent applications to rely upon the earlier filing date of the parent application as a priority filing date for commonly disclosed subject matter.

It is important to note that patent applications that have not issued as patents are maintained in secrecy for 18 months after filing. After 18 months from filing of the earliest application, such as a provisional, for example, the patent application, as originally filed is published on the USPTO website. If the applicant does not want the application published, they must advise the USPTO that they will not be filing foreign patent applications directed to the same invention, and the application is not published. If the applicant changes its mind about filing corresponding foreign patent applications, the USPTO is so notified, and the patent application is published on the USPTO website shortly thereafter. When a patent does issue, any abandoned or previously identified patent application mentioned in the specification of that issued patent becomes available for public scrutiny.