Patents

Typically three to five years from filing to grant. Expedited examination under Rule 24C — available to startups, small entities, female applicants and a few other categories — can bring this down to roughly one to two years.

File provisional when the core idea is settled but development is ongoing. It secures your priority date cheaply and gives you twelve months to refine before filing the complete specification. File complete directly when the invention is fully developed and you want the examination clock to start.

Twelve months from the filing date. The complete specification must be filed within that window or the provisional lapses and the priority date is lost. There is no extension.

Not enforceable rights. It secures a priority date and lets you use 'patent pending'. Enforceable rights only arise when the patent is granted following the complete specification and examination.

Yes — InPASS for Indian patents, Espacenet, Google Patents and WIPO Patentscope are all free. The limitation is method rather than access: effective searching requires the right IPC and CPC classification codes, synonym families, and coverage of non-patent literature. Self-searches commonly miss the closest prior art.

Patentability asks whether your invention is new enough to be patented. Freedom to operate asks whether selling your product would infringe someone else's live patent. They are independent — a novel invention can still infringe a broader existing patent.