Technical examination
Once we have completed the formal review of your application, the technical review will begin.
During the technical examination, we examine whether the invention meets the patentability criteria of novelty, inventive step and industrial applicability. The technical examination is always carried out by a patent engineer with technical competence in the specific field of technology of the application, and with knowledge of practice and regulations. We use advanced search tools and complete databases, the same used by the European Patent Office. If deficiencies are found in the technical examination, a technical notice will be sent to you, giving you the opportunity to rectify or comment on the deficiencies. If the deficiencies are not remedied, the application may be dismissed or rejected.
A qualified patent engineer with knowledge in the technical field of the invention will be the patent examiner responsible for your application.
The patent examiner will start by reading your application in order to, among other things:
- Understand what is the invention
- Understand what you think is new and special about it
- Review the patent claims
Search tools
In the next step, the patent examiner will check whether your invention is already known, or its degree of similarity to known technology.
For this work, the patent examiner uses several tools, including:
- Databases
- Books
- Scientific publications
- Trade journals
- Internet
Patentability
The patent examiner assesses the patentability of the invention by comparing it with the results of the searches. A final reconciliation with a colleague assures the quality of the examination.
Technical or final notice
After the technical review, you will receive either a technical notice or a final notice together with a Swedish Search Report. The technical notice is in Swedish or in English, depending on the language you have chosen.
If your patent application comprises two or more inventions which are independent of each other, you will receive a technical notice and a search report for the invention first mentioned in the claims, since a patent application may only contain one invention. If you want to receive an updated search report for the additional applications, you can pay a fee for each of the additional inventions you want searched. If you would like a patent also for these additional inventions, you must file separate applications for these inventions, see “Divisional Applications”.
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