Latest INPADOCDB and INPAFAMDB Enhancements Focus on Patent Status Information
INPADOCDB and INPAFAMDB have been enhanced with new search and display fields relevant to patent legal status including expiration dates.
The new Patent Status Indicator (/STI) field provides one of the following indicator flags per patent application:
- Alive
- Dead
- Transitional
- Indeterminate
The status of a given application is based on legal events reflected in more than 4,200 codes classified by FIZ Editorial and corresponding gazette dates and/or the calculated expiration date in field /XPD.
See HELP STI in INPADOCDB and INPAFAMDB for further information on the STI field, including definitions of the indicator flags, and how to use the field to track status changes.
The STI field is now automatically included in the BIB, STD, BRIEF, ALL, and MAX predefined display formats in INPADOCDB, and in the BRIEF display format in INPAFAMDB. The STI field can be custom displayed in both databases.
Note that the value in the Patent Status Indicator field represents predicted values. It cannot be guaranteed to be 100% complete and accurate. For critical projects, we recommend obtaining a legal opinion from a qualified patent attorney.
The introduction of the new Status Established Date (/STED) field allows customers to set up Alerts/SDIs based on /STED. Information on using STED for SDIs is also included in HELP STI.
The new Patent Term Adjustment (/PTA) field reports patent term adjustments for US applications. The field can be numerically searched (e.g., S 90-100/PTA) and custom displayed (e.g., D PTA). PTA information is inluded in the determination of the Calculated Expiration Date (/XPD) field and is specifically displayed as part of the XPD field:
XPD 20380412 (incl. 100 PTA days)
Legal Status Event Class (/LSEC) data provided by the EPO is now available as a second classification system in addition to the familiar Legal Status Code Category (/LSC2) categories. See HELP LEGSTAT in either database for complete information.
In addition to INPADOCDB and INPAFAMDB, the STNext databases CA/CAplus and MARPAT also provide STI information.
The Database Summary Sheets for the INPADOCDB and INPAFAMDB databases have been updated to reflect these changes. They are available at: https://www.cas.org/sites/default/files/documents/inpadocdb_120121.pdf and at: https://www.cas.org/sites/default/files/documents/inpafamdb_120121.pdf