FAQ

Frequent Asked Questions

Answers to those new to Patent informatics (Patinformatics)

Notice: I am not a Patent Examiner nor a Patent Lawyer, and the following is not legal advice; but will try to be accurate.

Two to Three Ids Assigned

ID	Description
Application id	Application Id of Filing
Pre-grant "PGPUB" ID	Application Publication "PGPUB" Id
Grant ID	Granted Patent Id

Kind codes are often appended to the ids, which can give more variation within the ids. If a document status changes the kind code changes to reflect the change; such as with corrections, re-examination, and re-issuance.

Three date fields

Field	XML location	Description
productionDate	@date-produced	Filing date
publishedDate	@date-publ	Publication Date
documentDate	document-id@date	Date Document Id was given; same as Published Date since current process assigns document ids (which are sequential) on the date of publication

Suggestions in creating Prior Art Corpus

* Index both Application and Grant publications * Using ApplicationId keep the newest publication document * Add PGPub ID to Grant as another Id associated with Patent * Update CPC Classification from Master CPC Classification bulk load files * if your use case needs ArtUnit for PGPub documents (not incuded in pgpubs) utilize Classification to Art Unit matrix * if you need current Assignee (patent ownership) utilized Patent Assignment XML bulk data files

Difference between applications and grants and reasons you likely need both

* many years go by before an application is examined and granted * Not all applications will be granted ; Abandoned Applications still count as Prior Art. * Not all grants have published applications (applicant can opt out of having their application published; many do and many do not) Grants with Kind Code "B1" do not have a published application. * Claims are only made public within Grants ; validity of a patent is derived from it's claims * The majority of the text should not change, if at all. Only small spelling and format changes (which do not change meaning) are allow within the application spec (abstract, description, ect..) * Once granted no further applications can take priority to it (believe examiner prior art searches go backwards from the date of the priority application.) Applicant is notified 3 weeks before granted, given the applicant time to fix errors, file additional applications claiming priority to it, ect..

Description Sub Fields

Different purpose for each sub field may warrant different treatment

Field	Common Header	Purpose
Related Application Description	CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS	Single paragraph describing related applications in the same patent family. Paragraph is not present if no prior patent family exists. Related Application Ids are already available within other fields the within the application biblio.
Brief Summary Description	BACKGROUND AND DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION	Short description of the invention, providing a more detail than the Abstract; usually a few paragraphs.
Drawing Description	BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS	Contains short descriptive title for each drawing, a single sentence or fragment for each drawing; sometimes as a list.
Detailed Description	DETAILED DESCRIPTION	Detailed description of patent figures and their interactions contained within the drawings. Largest sub-section of the description and largest body of text of the entire patent or application. May also contain large tables.