Patent application

Overview

In Finland patent applications are filed with the National Board of Patents and Registration of Finland (NBPR). The Patents Act, the Patents Decree and the Patent Instructions define the way in which an application is to be drafted. For further details see also the Patent Guide (in Finnish and Swedish only). In drafting an application it is advisable to study patent publications from the same field. Such publications you will find for example in the Espacenet database on the Internet.

It is worth while to draft a patent application with care, because you cannot add anything to it after the filing date. Patent claims can be modified while they are being processed, but the information needed in the modification must be found in the text of the application, either in the description or the original claims.

Parts of the application

For an application you will need a form, which is available on this website. The form has to be filed in two copies and be accompanied by the following items in three copies:

• a description of the invention, preferably with a drawing, if the invention can be illustrated by the drawing
• patent claims
• an abstract

Further, the following items must be given in one copy:

• a statement concerning the right to the invention, if the applicant is a person other than the inventor, or the inventor is not the sole applicant; the statement may also be an assignment by which the inventor transfers his or her right to the invention to the applicant
• a power of attorney, if the applicant has appointed a representative.

Patent applications cannot be filed merely by submitting a drawing or filling in the form.

Where to send the application?

The patent application may be either mailed to the address:

National Board of Patents and Registration
P.O.Box 1160
FI-00101 Helsinki

or brought to the NBPR Client Service, address Arkadiankatu 6 A, during office hours 8.00 to 16.15;

or sent electronically through the Epoline Online Filing (eOLF) program, which can be downloaded for free from our website http://patent.prh.fi (partly in English). Applications can be filed electronically through the eOLF program at all hours, every day of the year. The filing date will be the day when the documents arrive electronically at the NBPR, including weekends and holidays.

An application may also be filed by fax, but the original documents must be sent afterwards either by post or through the eOLF program. The fax number is (09) 6939 5328. Applications sent to that number before 24.00 hrs are also deemed as being received on the day when they were sent, including weekends and holidays.

Applications and other documents can no longer be delivered into the letterbox next to the NBPR main entrance, as the letterbox is no longer in use.

Filing fee payable in the beginning of the procedure

A filing fee is payable for the application (fees). The fee will not be refunded in the case the application does not lead to grant of a patent.

In which language?

The application may be drafted in Finnish, in Swedish or in English. If the claims and the abstract have been drawn up in only one of the national languages of Finland (either in Finnish or in Swedish), the applicant must submit a translation of them into the other national language, or, if the patent office provides the translation, pay the prescribed translation fee. If the claims and the abstract have been drawn up only in English, the applicant must submit a translation of the claims and the abstract into Finnish or Swedish. The translation must be submitted before the application is made available to the public, which takes place 18 months from the filing date or the earliest priority date.

The application may also be filed in some other language and it can receive a filing date, but it will not be examined before it has been translated into Finnish, Swedish or English.
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Description of the invention

The Patent Office acts only on the basis of a written description. A prototype or an oral explanation to the examiner is not a patent application. The description must be sufficiently clear to enable a person skilled in the art to carry out the invention on the basis of it. If that is not the case, a granted patent may be declared invalid.

A concise and factual title of the invention is used as the heading of the description.

The description is begun by telling what was the point of origin from which the inventor started making his or her invention. If the invention is an improvement to a device, it is told what that device is and what is the technical problem involved in it. If the starting point was that a particular product or device that would be needed does not exist, then this fact is stated. The important thing is to tell what is the technical problem that will be solved by the invention.

In the description one’s own invention is also disclosed and what new it will produce compared to previous solutions.

Finally, the description must give at least one detailed example of how the invention is applied in practice. When the invention is, say, a device or a product, it must be possible to describe its construction and functioning in the embodiment given as an example in a sufficiently detailed manner for a person skilled in the art to be able to prepare the device or product and to use it. In respect of a process, all the stages that are necessary for using it must be disclosed.

In some cases it is necessary to provide more than one example. Such a situation may occur for instance with chemical compounds in whose preparation several components with varying amounts may be used. It would then be advisable to give examples using several different mixture ratios.

Drawing

The drawing shall be made on a paper of A4 size, like other elements of the application. No explanatory text is placed in the drawings; instead the parts of the invention are marked with reference signs. These signs are used in the description after the words describing the parts of the invention.

Patent Claims

These tell what is protected by the patent, what the holder can prohibit others from doing. In assessing the patentability of an invention, the examiner looks at the claims and compares the invention disclosed in them to the solutions that have become known previously. If a patent litigation happens to ensue, the claims play a decisive role, and the definitions of invention and meanings used in the claims may be pondered for a long time and going deep into details. Therefore the claims must be drafted with special care.

The application may contain several claims, dependent or independent ones, but they must be drafted in such a manner that they are linked so as to form a single inventive concept.

In formal respect the patent claim is divided into two parts: the preamble and the characterising part. The preamble presents the features of the invention that are known from prior art; the characterising part presents its new and inventive features. The parts are separated from each other by the words “characterised in that” or some similar expression.

Abstract

The purpose of the abstract is to provide quick information on what the invention is about. It has no effect on the protection obtained by the patent. The abstract is usually published on the front page of the patent specification and its contents are usually retrievable in different electronic databases.

The abstract is a summary of at most 150 words of the invention. It discloses both the technical problem solved by the invention and the invention itself or the solution to the problem. If the description is accompanied by a drawing, the most suitable figure is chosen from the drawing to be published together with the abstract.