The drafting and filing of a patent application and the subsequent procedure is specialist work which raises numerous questions: Is your invention really as new as you think? Is it obvious to an expert? Do similar products or methods already exist? For which countries must the patent be valid? And for how long? Do you intend to exploit the invention yourself or do you want others (in specific countries) to do this for you? - at a fair profit of course! Schumann Patent Consultancy advises and conducts all procedures for you. On the basis of the information you provide, our agency will draw up a patent application and provide for filing with the appropriate government agency in almost every country in the world, for instance the Netherlands Intellectual Property Office, other national patent offices or supranational patent authorities such as the European Patent Office and the World Intellectual Property Organization. We frequently work together with other patent agencies located all over the world. When filing and processing your patent application, Schumann Patent Consultancy works on the basis of existing national and international legislation and regulations. The European Patent Convention thus provides the option of filing one patent application for most countries in Western Europe. Via the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) - a worldwide patent treaty - we can reserve the right for you for a period of about thirty months to apply for a patent in the PCT contracting states which you designate. The PCT moreover provides a central patentability examination. |