You told the world before you told the Patent Office

What actually happens

The examiner is not looking for who invented something first. She is looking for whether the claimed subject matter was already available to the public before your relevant date. Your own disclosure counts. A conference demonstration, a poster, a preprint, a customer trial without confidentiality, a crowdfunding page, a LinkedIn post with a photograph clear enough to teach the invention - all of these can anticipate your own claims.

The damage is often invisible for years. The application proceeds, publishes, and is granted. Then an opponent or a defendant finds your own 2024 conference slides and uses them to revoke your patent.

The exceptions are narrow, and they are not a grace period

Indian law does list situations that do not count as anticipation, and they are worth knowing precisely because they are so often over-read.

• Section 29(2) covers matter published without your consent and obtained from you, provided you applied as soon as reasonably practicable.
• Section 30 covers communication of the invention to the Government or a person authorised to investigate it.
• Section 31 gives a twelve-month window, but only for display or use at an industrial or other exhibition to which the Central Government has extended section 31 by notification, publication resulting from that display, and a paper read by the true and first inventor before a learned society or published in that society's transactions. The twelve months runs from the opening of the exhibition or the reading or publication of the paper.
• Section 32 covers public working in India within one year before the priority date for the purpose of reasonable trial only.

An ordinary trade fair that has not been notified is not covered. A journal article is not covered. A product launch is not covered. A YouTube video is not covered.

If it has already happened

It is still worth taking advice rather than assuming everything is lost. Three questions usually decide how much damage was done. What exactly was made available - the concept, or enough detail to enable someone to build it? To whom, and under what obligations? And is there subject matter in the invention that was not disclosed, which could still support a narrower but real claim?

Other countries have grace periods of their own on different terms. A disclosure that is fatal in India may not be fatal everywhere, which sometimes changes where it is worth filing.