Prior to filing the application in Norway, you may wish to have a search made in order to investigate the state of the art within the field of the invention to be patented. This is only relevant if the application is a first filing. We perform such searches in-house by staff that has work experience as examiner at the Norwegian Intellectual Property Office. The cited documents will be included as prior art upon drafting the patent application.

The time-frame for a search varies from several hours to several weeks, depending on the complexity of the search as well as the urgency. This is much faster than the first Official Action for a first filing in Norway, which normally issues approximately 8 months after filing.