free to abandon an application during the search and examination process. An application may be abandoned if, for example, prior art is revealed which will prevent the grant of a patent and the applicant decides to save cost by terminating the application. An application may be deemed abandoned by the patent office if the applicant fails to meet any of the requirements of the application process, for example replying to an examination report. Deferred examination In some jurisdictions (such as Japan and South Korea), after filing an application, examination is optional, and only on request, rather than automatic. For example, in Japan, an application is published at 18 months after the priority date, but otherwise the application lies fallow until the applicant demands examination, up to seven years after filing. This gives the applicant time to evaluate which applications are worth spending money on, and which should simply be abandoned. Only a portion of the total number of filed applications is selected for examination by the applicants. Invention registration Some jurisdictions including Bermuda, South Africa, China (in the case of Utility Models), Germany (in the case of Gebrauchsmusters (Utility Model)) and by option Spain, go one step further, in that an application is passed to issue and publication as an enforceable patent in short order, with no substantive examination. Questions of novelty and non-obviousness/inventive step are not reviewed until litigation may arise concerning the issues. Obviously, such a patent does not carry the same presumption of validity as a patent that has been fully examined. Such systems are known as "invention registration" regimes, and have the benefit of reduced costs, because applicants may postpone or completely forego the expensive process of examination for inventions that are of small or speculative value in the applicant's field of endeavor. Another advantage is that a patent is granted relatively fast. A patent in South Africa, for example, is granted approximately 8 months after the date of filing, whereas in examining countries, it is highly unusual for a patent to be granted in less than 3 years. At the same time, simply filing an application usually preserves the applicant's right to subsequently seek full examination and protection for his invention, if a competitor or a pirate is later discovered to infringe the invention. Appeals However, if the examiner and the applicant cannot reach agreement regarding the patentability of the application, the applicant may file