Prior disclosure or use may preclude the obtaining of a valid patent, or invalidate any patent subsequently granted. Standard and Petty patents may be granted in Australia. A standard patent has a maximum term of 20 years whereas a petty patent has a maximum term of 6 years. A maximum of three claims are allowed in a petty patent, whereas standard patent may have any number of claims. Petty patents are generally more suitable for relatively simple inventions having a short market life.
Petty patents are also less expensive to obtain than standard patents.
These searches are performed by skilled personnel employing the latest computer and communication equipment. There are over ninety national and international databases covering patent records from many countries and research literature relating to most technologies. The cost of a patent search depends upon the nature and complexity of the technology, the type of search, the databases searched, and the number of relevant entries found.