It must disclose, in some detail, the nature of the invention and in this regard may be more informative than a journal article on the same subject. For an information seeker, details disclosed by an existing patent may prevent unnecessary research. A patent application will be examined by officials of each country for which an application is made. If granted, the patent will be protected only in that country.
European countries have a centralised patent examining system.
Although a granted patent is public information, a patent application will be kept confidential until 18 months has lapsed from the initial application. In the USA system there is no OPI stage, and patent applications may be kept confidential until after they are granted. Many USA patent applications which do not succeed as granted patents may never be published, whereas all other countries publish at the OPI stage. As USA patents usually take at least 18 months to be granted this period can be regarded as the normal delay, after the initial patent application, in discovering application details for all patents. TOP Searching for existing patents Patent information can be located from both printed and electronic sources.