Guide to STN Patent Databases – Basic Version - Paton - TU Ilmenau

22 Family search
22.1 Typical family searches
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Guide to STN Patent Databases
opposition immediately when a patent is granted (e.g. DE or EP)
Identification of potential markets for certain technologies
Monitoring competitor activities in certain markets
Finding family members in English (German)
Finding family members for obtaining full-text documents
Commercial evaluation and utilization of patents: it is important in how many and in which countries
patents were applied for, e.g. in licensing negotiations or Due Diligence in mergers and acquisitions
22.2 International patent families
All patent publications in different countries that concern the same invention, form a patent family. The members of
this patent family refer to the same initial patent application (the priority application). The legal basis for this is the
Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property of 1883. If a patent application is filed in any member state of
the Paris Convention further applications can be filed in other member states within the priority term of one year
and claim the priority of the first application. Merging world-wide patent publications into one family representing
an invention is an effective and time-saving way both for database producers creating family-based databases and
for patent searchers to evaluate their search results.
The publications of family members of one country are called national patent families.
Types of patent families include:
Conventional patent family
The same priority application(s)
The same applicant2/inventor
The same subject matter
Non-conventional patent family
No claim to the same priority application
The same applicant/inventor
The same subject matter
Technical patent families
The same subject matter
Competing patent applications or same applicant/inventor
When referring to patent families this usually means conventional patent families. These are covered in all data bases
having patent families. Non-conventional and technical patent families are much more special and are covered in
few patent databases (DWPI, IMSPATENTS).
2 The right to a priority can be transferred.
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