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What do you get by filing a provisional EP patent application?

By filing a provisional EP patent application, you get a filing date and a filing number.

Such filing date and filing number provides you with a patent-pending status and a so called "priority right".

The priority right allows you within a one-year period to file full patent applications for the same invention in any of the 177 countries that conform to the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, or to file an International Patent Application (PCT application) covering 152 countries. 

The full patent applications you may have filed within the one-year period will be considered as filed on the same day as your provisional EP patent application.

For example, if you have filed a provisional EP patent application on January 15, 2018 and a US patent application on December 15, 2018 claiming priority of your provisional EP patent application.

Your US patent application shall be considered as filed on January 15, 2018.

Therefore, any disclosure or filing that may have occurred between January 15, 2018 and December 15, 2018 do not affect your patent right. You are "immune" over that one-year period.

The public will not know have access to your provisional EP patent application during the one-year period.

However, please consider that provisional applications are made accessible to the public if you decide to file a full patent application which becomes published around 18 months from the filing date of your provisional EP patent application.

A very important point to have in mind is that the full patent application gets the benefit of the earlier filing date only for the same invention, in other words to the extent of the subject matter that was included in the provisional EP patent application. Any new subject matter added will get the later filing date.