Data sources used for patent data

We use raw data from the following authorities and organisations in our databases:

• DE: German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA)
• EP: European Patent Office (EPO)
• WO: World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO)
• US: Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)
• FR: Institut national de la propriété industrielle (INPI)
• CN: Intellectual Property Publishing House Co., Ltd (IPPH)
• JP: National Center for Industrial Property Information and Training (INPIT)

For other countries and organisations we use the DocDB data from the European Patent Office.

Uniform formatting of patent data and addition of meta data

You receive consistently formatted bibliographic data in which classifications and priorities have always the same structure.

Meta data such as patent family IDs and the allocation to the search profile simplify the processing of circulating patents.

Before delivering the patent data, they are completed with patent family IDs. Therefore, we use the simple INPADOC patent family from the DocDB. Previously published documents from a patent family simplify the distribution and rating in patentGate. You can see former ratings directly on the new document.

You have more than one search profile? Then an identifier indicates to which profile the document belongs. CPCs allocated by the EPO after publication are added to the patents.

Transfer of data from previously used applications

When you choose to work with patentGate you can adopt your previous patent data, evaluations and comments. Classification systems, such as descriptors or your own classifications, can be mapped easily. Thus, your current knowledge stays available. You can continue using your data in the future.

Drawings and full texts

Title page drawings complement the bibliographic data. If those are not given you receive the first drawing, a chart or formula from the full texts. The complete content of the patent is available as PDF. In case that Patent Offices do not edit text based PDF's we prepare the documents with OCR (Optical Character Recognition). Thereby, texts from documents in Latin-alphabets can be copied and processed.

Delivery of patent data

Bibliographic data in different formats (Excel, adjusted XML-formats) can be delivered on the basis of your specifications.

Drawings and full texts in PDF format can also be provided with the help of lists of numbers of patents or search profiles.

Patent monitoring

Patent documents are a reliable source of information regarding technology trends and actual developments of competitors. The regular patent monitoring determines patents and utility models which were published by the patent offices during the last month or week.

Synonyms are alerts or SDI (selective dissemination of information).

Why industrial property rights should be monitored

The information disclosed in patent documents are published frequently only in patent documents. The inventions are not necessarily described in leaflets, journals or other literature.

Patent monitoring helps saving costs due to avoiding duplicate inventions. That prevents the development of products which cannot be produced because of patent protection. It also offers protection against negative legal effects of patent infringement.

Companies can buy or offer licences or find alternative technical solutions which are off-patent and free of other utility models. Against German or European patents, opposition can be raised within a period of objection of 9 month. According to the annual report of the German Federal Patent Court there were more than 800 pending actions in 2014.

What should be included in patent monitoring?

Monitoring should include countries in which your company operates as well as all markets where your products are sold. The basic coverage is formed by European patent applications and patents, and German published applications (Offenlegungsschrift), patents and utility models. International patent applications under the PCT, US-American patent applications and patents complete the patent monitoring. Asian patents become more important. In addition, publications of other national patent authorities are included on demand.

Are you interested in documents cited in the search and examining procedures? Then European and international search reports should be included in patent monitoring.

Patent families are based on patent applications whose priority was also claimed in other countries. References to already evaluated patent family members from previous workflows speed up the patent work. The search profiles contain relevant search criteria.

Developing search profiles

One or more patent profiles are the basis for frequent patent monitoring. We build search strategies depending on the product diversity and structure of your company.

Thematically structured search profiles contain property rights which are of interest for a department or research team. The profiles can also be subdivided into competitors, fields of technology or keywords.

Patents of competitors indicate their fields of research and development. That allows conclusions about actual technology trends. Patent applications of certain inventors also reveal the direction of developments.

The international patent classification IPC and the Cooperative Patent Classification CPC classify different fields independent of the patent document's language. They are an important tool for patent monitoring.

Keywords can limit the data quantity in case that competitors or IPC notations deliver too many results.

We support you in developing and optimising your search strategies by using statistical analyses.

Products for patent monitoring

You find an overview of our patent monitoring products on our product page.

Products for patent monitoring

Our products for patent monitoring are tailored to different sizes of companies. Details about patent monitoring and creating search profiles are described in this article about patent monitoring.

Patent data in custom formats can be integrated in existing databases.

PDF patent reports can be used for distribution to individual developers or small teams. Interesting patents can be discussed in teams. Results can be passed via email or telephone.

patentGate organises the patent workflow in companies. All actions are stored in the patent database. Thus, synergies through patent families and parallel processing can be used. Extensive options for configurations determine how patent information is distributed in the company and how to react to feedback.

patentGate/Report combines searchable databases and patent reports. Users subscribe to one or more reports and receive actual patent information in this way.

 
For all products we use official data sources from Patent Offices.

InventorLab

InventorLab is a web application that captures the innovation process from the first idea to the preparation of a patent filing and makes this information available to inventors.

Legal status monitoring

We monitor legal status changes of patent documents published by the offices DE, EP, WO, US, CN, JP. You can choose whether you want to be informed about all or only about certain events. You receive new results as a spreadsheet or PDF.
You find the notification about changes in the legal status of a patent published in the patent registers in legal status monitoring.

Legal status monitoring

patentGate offers a comprehensive monitoring of legal status for patent documents (eg, payment of fees, examination report, rejection, withdrawal, opposition, grant, publication of patent family members).

Functions

patentGate offers the following services:

• monitoring of legal status for the following offices: EP, PCT, USPTO, DE incl. utility models
• add new alerts via web interface or e-mail
• receive results as customized PDF reports with company specific data and layout
• on the fly results in XML format
• individual categorization of events and customer defined update frequency for reports
• information about all events including patent families or specific events only

Request an offer

Please contact us for a customized offer.
Register for a free trial at https://port.patentgate.de/gate/wsql/pgrs/index.html. This includes the legal status monitoring for up to 5 documents for 6 months.

Find here a sample of a legal status report.