Request for Examination


Requesting examination for standard patent applications

After your standard patent application is submitted you must request examination within 5 years of the filing date. However, if you have not voluntarily requested examination, around 55 months from your earliest priority date you'll receive a notification directing you to request examination. You must request examination within 6 months of the date of this notification or your application will lapse.

You can request examination (either voluntarily or after being directed to do so) by completing and submitting a Request for Examination form and paying fee.

Once examination is requested you can normally expect a reply within about 12 months, depending on our workload.

After examination you'll be sent either an adverse report or a notice that your standard patent application has been accepted. If it's an adverse report, you'll be given the opportunity to make changes to your specification to correct the problems.

If all the problems that arise during examination cannot be overcome within 21 months from the date of the first report, your complete application will lapse.

Examination and certification of innovation patents

Examination and certification of patents is undertaken by us to ensure your patent meets the requirements of the Patents Act 1990.

To have legally enforceable patent rights, you must request that your innovation patent be examined, and pay the required fee. Alternatively, your competitors can also request examination of your innovation patent (e.g. if they own a patent that might be infringed by your invention). If this is the case, they pay half of the examination fee and you pay the remainder. In either case, if you don't pay your part of the examination fee, your innovation patent will cease.

During examination you will receive one of two possible replies:

  • a notice that your patent has been successfully certified
  • an adverse report explaining why your innovation patent does not meet the requirements of the Patents Act 1990.

Please note that, if the examination request has been made by a person other than the patentee, that person will receive a copy of each adverse report.

Once your innovation patent is examined and certified you can take legal action against an infringing party.

Submitting a request for examination

This is the starting point to submit a Request for Examination form.

The information on this page will help you to successfully complete and submit an online request. Please note:

  • The request should take between 5 - 10 minutes if you prepare your information in advance
  • The request process must be completed in one session to help ensure the security of your data. You cannot save a partially completed form and return to it later
  • Please note that due to system constraints, a file size limit of 30MB currently applies to filed attached to this form. Files larger than 30MB will not be accepted for processing
  • The logon session will time out after an hour of inactivity to help protect your privacy. If you do not initiate any activity in the browser within an hour, the session will time out and you will automatically be logged out next time you try access the page
  • If you are connecting to the internet through a dial up account, ask your Internet Service Provider how long the computer needs to remain idle before you are disconnected.

Information Checklist

To complete the request you will need to assemble the following information. This information must be supplied for your request to be submitted.

  1. Application or patent number to which this request refers (if you have just lodged a patent application, and you have not yet received an application number, please enter your transaction reference number instead)
  2. Patent number, country and date of grant if you are requesting modified examination
  3. Certified copy of the granted patent, if you are requesting modified examination. This is optional for at this stage, however it must eventually be supplied for your request to be processed. This can be supplied as a file attached to the or form, or as a file or paper copy to be forwarded later

The form

The request form is divided into two section. Once you have completed both these sections you will be able to preview your complete request on-screen before you submit to us. You will also be able to print out for your own records all the information you have supplied. If you have the required information available you can proceed directly to the Request for Examination form.

Last Updated: 22/12/2011