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Patent of addition or a separate application?
For an improvement to your own invention. A patent of addition avoids an inventive-step attack over your main invention, but it lives and dies with the main patent.
Compare carefully - an independent application may serve you better.
Moderate complexity - several routes or missing facts
Please review this with an advocate, patent attorney or registered patent agent before you act. Do not rely on this answer alone.
- An independent patent has its own 20-year term from its own filing date and does not depend on the main patent.
- But it pays its own renewal fees, and it must be inventive over everything public, including your own main invention once published.
- A patent of addition is shorter-lived and dependent, but protected from an inventive-step attack over the main invention (section 56(1)).
- If you choose an independent patent now and both patents are yours, section 54(2) allows you later to request conversion of the improvement patent into a patent of addition.
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Educational guidance only - not legal advice. Do not rely on it. It cannot see your documents, your dates or the prior art, and those usually decide the answer. Laws, rules, forms, fees and deadlines change. Please review your situation with a qualified advocate, patent attorney or registered patent agent before you act or decide not to act.
Not sure whether this applies to your invention?
The honest answer usually needs someone to look at your actual disclosure, your timeline and the prior art. That is a conversation, not an article.