agency patents

On receipt of your instructions to file a patent application in South Africa, we shall acknowledge your instructions and, where necessary, request you to provide information and documents that may be required immediately for the filing of the application.

In the case of Convention and non-Convention applications, provided we are given sufficient time we shall include at the time of filing any amendments that you may wish us to file. We shall also review the specification and advise you as to its compliance with South African patent law and practice. We shall amend the specification before filing to include any amendments approved by you.

In the case of Convention and non-Convention applications, in respect of which we are unable to review the specification and advise as to amendments in time before filing, and in the case of all PCT National Phase patent applications, we shall review the specification after filing and advise as to amendments that may be required to bring the specification into conformity with South African patent law and practice.

In order to facilitate the making of amendments to the specification, we request that you provide us with a copy of the specification and claims (as amended under Articles 19 or 34 or with amendments proposed under Article 41) in Microsoft Word format.

A filing receipt and application number are received from the Patent Office about 7 days after filing. We shall report the filing details to you and forward the necessary formal documents to you for signature and lodgement at the South African Patent Office after filing. The patent, when granted, retains the same number as that of the application.

In due course, we shall receive a notice of acceptance from the Patent Office and we shall then arrange for advertisement of acceptance. After advertisement of acceptance a Letters Patent document will issue from the Patent Office and we shall check and forward this document to you. It is not uncommon for the Patent Office to take up to six months after advertisement of acceptance to issue the Letters Patent document.

Unless we are instructed to the contrary, we shall capture the details of the application on our renewals records and shall remind you of renewal dates and attend to renewal of the application on your instructions. It is a requirement of the South African Patents Act that a local address for service is recorded in respect of a South African patent application. Thus, notwithstanding that you may elect to use the services of a renewals agency, we shall, until instructed otherwise by the applicant or patentee, remain recorded as the address for service for applications that we have filed.