Your application must include a patent specification and forms providing details of your application. The patent specification must provide a written description which accurately and broadly describes the characteristics of your invention and claims which state the scope of the patent rights sought. Recommend you seek professional advice when preparing your application.

Applicants not living in the country:
- must furnish an address for service in New Zealand

Filing requirements:

Form:
- To be sent to resident agent for filing of application
- Non-Convention and convention applications:
• Signed appropriate application forms
• Specification in triplicate on international A4 size paper
• Drawings in triplicate on international A4 size paper
• Certified copy of basic applications with verified English translation thereof if basics applications not in English.

Treaty applications:
- Signed request for entry into national phase
- Copy of international application (PCT pamphlet)
- Verified English translations of PCT pamphlet and priority documents
- Copies of any amendments filed at International Bureau or the International Preliminary Examination Authority, or verified English translation of these amendments if in another language.

Priority documents:
- Within 3 months after the filing date

Consular legalization:
- Legalization of signatures is not required, but English translations of priority documents must be verified by statutory declaration or otherwise to the satisfaction of the Commissioner

Complete specification:

-Kind of applications:
• Non- Convention: may be filed with a provisional specification or a complete specification. A complete specification must be filed within 12 months, extensible to a maximum of 15 months, of filing the provisional specification.
• Convention: must be filed with a complete specification within 12 months of the earliest priority date
• Treaty applications: the entry of an international PCT application into the New Zealand national phase is deemed to be an application accompanied by a complete specification. The request must be made within 31 months of the earliest priority date.

-Kind of protections:
• Independent patents and patents addition

Novelty:
- The invention must not have been made available to the public (as by documentary publication, or use or sale) in New Zealand before the priority date of the New Zealand claims
- Except disclosures resulting from:
• Communication to a government department for purpose of investigation of the invention
• Display at an officially notified exhibition within six months before the application
• Reading of a paper by the inventor before a learned society, within six months before the application
• Public working within New Zealand within one year before the application, only if reasonably necessary for purposes of reasonable trial having regard to the nature of the invention
• Publication in New Zealand of a New Zealand or foreign patent specification or official abridgement relating to an application for patent made more than 50 years before the application
• Obtaining of the invention without consent, provided that the New Zealand application is made as soon as reasonably practicable after this is discovered

Exceptions to protection:
• Intangible schemes
• Inventions whose use would be contrary to morality
• Methods of medical treatments of humans

Territory covered:
- New Zealand and Cook Islands

Examination procedure:
- Unaccepted application may be amended to meet official objections, or voluntarily on request of the applicant and with leave of the Commissioner. New Zealand has a “first-to-file” system, and there is no provision for interference proceeding involving questions of prior conception of the invention, unless fraudulent obtaining is alleged. An invention procedure has prior use in New Zealand, and will invalidate a patent for invention, unless it falls within of the above exceptions

Publication:
- The application documents are published shortly after acceptance of the complete specification. Takes place on the date of issue of the Patent Office Journal containing advertisement of the acceptance of the complete specification.
- The protection begins in the date of the filing of the complete specification

Duration:
- Before January 1 of 1995: granted for a term of 16 years, subject to pay of the prescribed renewal fees, in a period not exceeding 5 years or, in an exceptional case, ten years.
- After January 1 of 1995: granted for 20 years, subject to the payment of renewal fees

Modification of protection after granting:
- There are grounds for revocation of a patent if the invention was used in New Zealand before the priority date of the patent claims.

Opposition to granted patents:
- Any interested person who did not oppose the grant of a patent may, within one year after sealing of the patent, apply the Commissioner to revoke the patent on any grounds on which the grant of the patent could have been opposed.