Can a patent be filed in a provisional form or at a Notary’s office?
Even if this is a very rarely followed procedure, as it is always preferable to prepare all the documentation with the outmost accuracy, it is also possible filing a patent application by preparing a summarised description of the invention, attaching drawings and marking on the presentation form the box “RES EX”, which means “ reserved exemplar”.
This way we can acquire a number and date related to this patent application, but within two months all final documents together with a letter of declaration removing the reserve previously placed, must be filed, and the new enclosed documentation must be then considerate definitive. On the other hand, filing an application at a Notary, which is mostly the case, has not got any value as the real right over an invention derive solely and exclusively by the granting of the patent.
By filing it at a Notary, we can only demonstrate that we had a certain idea at a certain time, but in Italy rules the principle of “first to file” and not “first to invent”, therefore whoever files the patent application first has all the rights over it.