Frequently asked questions

A free public registry where anyone can publish a technical disclosure with a date that can be proven, so that the invention it describes generally can no longer be patented by anyone.

Open Prior Art is operated by Adria Intellectual Property, Croatia. It is not a patent office and gives no legal advice.

Yes. Publishing, searching, certificates and verification are free. There are no paid tiers.

Anyone aged 18 or older with a verified account: inventors, makers, researchers, companies. You can publish up to three disclosures in 24 hours.

It makes your invention prior art for patent applications filed after your publication date, which generally means they should not be granted for the same thing. It doesn't guarantee that an examiner finds it; if a patent is granted anyway, your publication can be used to challenge it.

In most countries, no. Europe and China have no general grace period. The US, Japan, South Korea, Canada and Australia allow 12 months for the inventor's own disclosures, but only there.

No. It creates no rights. It keeps the invention free for everyone, including you.

A publication after their filing date won't count against them. If the idea was public before they filed, you can bring that evidence to the patent office, for example with free third-party observations at the European Patent Office. A patent professional can advise on a specific case.

Technical ideas: products, devices, processes, methods, compositions, uses. Not opinions, business plans, other people's confidential information or personal data.

Any language for the original. An English title and summary are required, written by you, so examiners can find the entry.

Yes. Entries show "Anonymous" unless you choose to show your name or company. We still verify that a real person submitted it, and keep that private.

During the beta, a person reviews every submission, usually within a few working days. The publication date is the day it goes online.

No. Publication is permanent, which is what makes it useful as prior art. We may retract entries only if they break the law or the terms.

Each entry gets a SHA-256 fingerprint of its exact content, timestamped by two independent RFC 3161 timestamping services, and a copy in the Internet Archive. Anyone can check these without relying on us.

A one-page document, styled like a patent front page, with the entry's bibliographic data, fingerprint, timestamps and archive link. It is issued once the independent proof is complete and can be verified online by anyone.

No. It confirms what was published and when. It grants no rights and is not an opinion on novelty or validity.