Provisional Specification
The Australian provisional specification is the point of entry into the Australian patent system. The provisional is a thorough and accurate description of an invention, usually accompanied by drawings. A provisional specification need not contain claims and is not examined by a patents examiner. The provisional must be followed by a "complete" specification within one year.

Sometimes multiple provisional specifications are filed, during the course of a year, on the same invention. This is normal where an invention is evolving or being readied for manufacture. The goal is to file a single complete specification, no later than one year from the first provisional, based on all of the provisionals filed in the preceding year.

The provisional specification is also a document that can be relied upon for Paris Convention priority in overseas jurisdictions and which can be the basis for a PCT application. Accordingly, a strong provisional is the basis for strong protection in Australia and abroad.

Complete Specification
A complete specification requires claims. The claims are the part of the patent that define, in words, the power and reach of the patent. Claims require considerable experience to draft. First, there are elaborate rules for claim drafting. Second, useful claims take your competitive and commercial reality into consideration. Third, the claims must take into account the history of the technology in the general field of the invention. For this reason it is almost impossible for a lay person to draft successful claims. To complicate matters, the patent office is free to grant claims which are valid but useless. It may take years to determine that claims are useless, at which point there is little or nothing that can be done about it.

A granted patent provides nation-wide protection for your invention for 20 years. A patent can serve as the basis of a technology or product license, or as a means of controlling the manufacture, use or sale of your invention. It can stop your competitors cold in their track or be used as an inducement to negotiate on commercial terms. If you don't patent the inventions that you commercialise, you are essentially giving your R&D away.

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