WIPO and PATSTAT (III): patents entering national and regional phase

As previously stated on part (I) of this topic, WO patents pass across two phases: international and national (or regional in EP case).

In this post I'll face the issue of determining how to distinguish PCT applications that entered the latter phase.


I'll referr to the case of EURO-PCT appication but it may be valid also for any other patent office.

We already know that by selecting Appln_auth = ‘EP’, Appln_kind = ‘W’, Publn_auth = ‘WO’, we gather PCT at international phase that were filed at the EPO. 

PCT applications that have entered the European regional phase will have (a) corresponding EP application(s) for which the international_appln_id refers to the original PCT application.
So, you have to select all EPO applications (Appln_auth EP) having a Internat_appln_id filled in (PATSTAT team say it’s exhaustive for EPO).

Mind that the Application kind will be ‘A’, not ‘W’, since these have been validated as EPO applications (entrance to the EPO regional phase).

Let’s consider this EURO-PCT  applications

APPLN_ID	APPLN AUTH	APPLN_NR	APPLN KIND	APPLN_FILING DATE	IPR TYPE
15808675	'EP'	'        9901446'	'W'	'1999-03-05'	'PI'

That gives origin to this publication

PAT_PUBLN ID	PUBLN_ AUTH	PUBLN_NR	PUBLN_ KIND	APPLN_ID	PUBLN_DATE
17714675	'WO'	'        9944650'	'A1'	15808675	'1999-09-10'

Now we cross check the application_id on internat_appln_id of TLS201 and we get  this:

APPLN_ID	APPLN AUTH	APPLN_NR	APPLN KIND	APPLN_FILING DATE	IPR TYPE	INTERNAT APPLN_ID
1289254	'AU'	'        3328799'	'D'	'1999-03-05'	'PI'	15808675
15821876	'EP'	'       00104638'	'A'	'2000-03-03'	'PI'	15808675
52820607	'US'	'       51888700'	'A'	'2000-03-06'	'PI'	15808675

This means:  the international application gave origin to 2 national phase and 1 regional phase patent.

See also this patent on espacenet along with it’s patent family.

Thanks to Catalina Martinez, Helene Dernis and Geert Boedt for clarifying me the issue.
NOTE: I know I should have posted part II before part III but I swear next week I'll post it...

WIPO and PATSTAT (I)

Among the many patent offices, Patstat contains data from WIPO/PCT; such data cannot be treated like others patent offices, because of the very different application procedure.
Let's give as a first step some definitions taken from www.wipo.int and epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu:

The WIPO-administered Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) provides for the filing of a single international patent application which has the same effect as national applications filed in the designated countries. An applicant seeking protection may file one application and request protection in as many signatory states as needed.

The Treaty makes it possible to seek patent protection for an invention simultaneously in each of a large number of countries by filing an "international" patent application. Such an application may be filed by anyone who is a national or resident of a Contracting State. It may generally be filed with the national patent office of the Contracting State of which the applicant is a national or resident or, at the applicant's option, with the International Bureau of WIPO in Geneva (direct filing procedure).

The international application is then subjected to what is called an "international search." That search is carried out by one of the major patent offices appointed by the PCT Assembly as an International Searching Authority (ISA). The said search results in an "international search report," that is, a listing of the citations of such published documents that might affect the patentability of the invention claimed in the international application.  At the same time, the ISA prepares a written opinion on patentability.

The international search report and the written opinion are communicated by the ISA to the applicant who may decide to withdraw his application, in particular where the said report or opinion makes the granting of patents unlikely.

If the international application is not withdrawn, it is, together with the international search report, published by the International Bureau.  The written opinion is not published.

The procedure under the PCT has great advantages for the applicant, the patent offices and the general public:

(i) the applicant has up to 18 months more than he has in a procedure outside the PCT to reflect on the desirability of seeking protection in foreign countries, to appoint local patent agents in each foreign country, to prepare the necessary translations and to pay the national fees;

(ii) the search and examination work of patent offices can be considerably reduced or virtually eliminated thanks to the international search report, the written opinion and, where applicable, the international preliminary examination report that accompany the international application;

(iii) since each international application is published together with an international search report, third parties are in a better position to formulate a well-founded opinion about the patentability of the claimed invention.

For a patent application filed under the EURO-PCT route, two phases are identified, the international
phase and the national or regional (European) phase.
During the international phase, a search is carried out, and eighteen months after the priority date (the date of the first application at any patent office), the application is published.
When the international search report is finalised, the applicant has to choose between three alternatives: transferring the application to a national or regional patent office among those designated in the application (in which case it will enter the national or regional phase); electing an international preliminary examination; or withdrawing the application.
If the application  enters the regional or national phase, formal search and substantive examination are undertaken, ending with the application being either granted, refused, or withdrawn by the applicant.

Thanks to Prof. Laurent Manderieux for explaining me some important concepts on this issue.

Counting and filtering applications in PATSTAT (part I)

as previously stated in this blog, the pair application number, application authority is not  enough to give a univocal identification to an application document.



We may discover (in sept 2009 ediction) 57988 multiples (most doubles, only 3311 >=3) .
These are the application authorities who have more than100 duplications.

'JP'	31055
'US'	11214
'DE'	7376
'AU'	3694
'IT'	2393
'DD'	720
'NO'	235
'SE'	207
'SU'	186
'NL'	125
'ES'	107
'KR'	104

If we add also filing date, duplications figure remains almoste the same (57985) where all cases, but 10, have filing date 31/12/9999.
Out of 63595000 records (I'm always talking about sept 2009 ediction) is less than 0,1 %.

As a matter of fact the application_id (that is the main key of Patstat) is defined as a unique combination of application number, application authority and application kind.

On the other hand we should be aware that different triples of application authority, number and kind may address the same document: FI kind A (application) and T (translation) identify (given the same application autority and number) the same document.

So we need to understand how to filter the pairs application autority/ application kind in order to consider only those documents who are applications.

The problem is that we have 762 pairs application autority/ application kind.
We would need to find a concordance table (like FI the one we may find on delphion for publication kind http://www.delphion.com/help/kindcodes) and reclassify it in macroclasses allowing us to drop 'accessory' documents and retain only the documents we want to keep.

To do it we must also go deeper into relationship among applications and pubblications, since according to the data model, every application has 0 to N publications, where every publication belongs to exactly 1 application.

[to be continued]

Adding legal status to patents (inpadoc to mysql - part II)

3) CHECK AND CLEANUP

When import procedure in NAVYCAT has finished, first we should check the log in order to see if some records have been left due to import errors;
Regardless what the documents say, there will be some records that contain in L510EP field data with non ascii chars (a dozen in 2010 files).
You can use the log, correcting the wrong chars, to cue the records skipped via SQL.

On the other hand we should also crosscheck data contained in the T12BFYYMM___STAT file against the content of our table, for T12BF, by using the following SQL

select L001EP, count(l002ep) as c from test.patlegal
group by L001EP

If figures are equivalent, we can guess import was OK.


The import procedure up to here imported also header and trailing records, so we need to run a cleanup sql.

delete from test.patlegal
where L001EP is null and L002EP is null and L003EP is null


For better exploiting the data, this two handbook are very useful…

http://documents.epo.org/projects/babylon/eponet.nsf/0/85D8230D18F52DCDC12572440037552F/$File/T12EXT22_07-10_en.pdf

http://documents.epo.org/projects/babylon/eponet.nsf/0/21B2BAA84E866C40C12574CF00484D32/$File/ExtendedLegalEvents_Manual_update_June2010_en.pdf

Also a vocabulary of PRS code can be downloaded here:
http://documents.epo.org/projects/babylon/rawdata.nsf/0/BB6076C83F0196D3C125779D003D0970/$File/le-codes-en1037.txt

4) RESTRUCTURING DATA
In order to need to build a more consistent dataset, we need to start to look better into field contents.
We will deal here with T12BF data. XLEV will be subject of a further post.

4a) drop empty fields

Fields L006EP L009EP L010EP L011EP L015 L016 L019 L020 L514 are empty and they may be dropped.

Georg Huber from EPO explained me very kindly the reason:
"During the implementation of the new PRS system (finished 2003) it was not evident that some of the data in the old system have been superfluous  (L006EP, L009EP).
For deletion of the data special information have not been implemented (=reasons for deletion of data) (L010EP, L011EP, L014EP).
The application numbers and the publication numbers had in the old PS system another number format (INPADOC number format) as in the new system (DocDB number format). These old number format was given to our customers until 2007 in the tags (L015EP, L016EP)
Tags L019EP, L020EP are foreseen as future possibilities that are not implemented yet.
We have not included any new legal events, the publication language is important or supplied by the national offices. therefore L015EP is always empty."

Be also aware that for some hundred cases the pair COUNTRY/PRSCODE1 in L001EP/L008EP field will not match the vocabulary previously linked;

These are some examples from 2010 table:

L001EP	L008EP	count
DE	C1	370
SU	MM4A	73
SE	WWW	19
SU	PD4A	17
SU	QB4A	11
SU	QZ4A	10

Always citing Georg Huber these are the reasons:


"For WO, I can see three reasons that these errors occurred.
1. There is not yet a publication number in the main database for these data and therefore the filing number was given instead of WO publication number (these is the reasons we send for WO publication numbers as in the main database the application numbers have the country code of the patent authority the PCT application has been filed).

2. A former existing publication number disappeared from the bibliographic main database

For SU and CS are have been similar problems, as these are applications of RU and CZ patents.
I assume that in the main bibliographic database the application number is still the former country. "

So Eventually this may be the demi-final version of our data

Corresp. TAG	type	Description
L001EP	$2	Country code
L002EP	$1	Format of document number following rules for either (F)iling applications or (P)ublications
L003EP	$20	Document number
L004EP	$2	Kind code for document number (if provided)
L005EP	$2	IPR type (PI Patent of Invention / UM Utility Model)
L007EP	DATE8	PRS date; DATE_GAZETTE; date of notification to the public
L008EP	$4	4 bytes Legal Event code 1(lookup on table PRSCODE1)
L014EP	DATE8	Publication or filing date (if provided) of DOCDB document in tags L001EP, L003EP, L004EP
L017EP	$171	DOCDB publication ID; relates to the first publication level found in DOCDB
L018EP	$8	DATE this event was last exchanged to subscribers
L501EP	$2	Corresponding country code for PRS code •EP REG••
L502EP	$4	Corresponding EP code 1 for PRS code  •EP REG••
L503EP	20	Corresponding patent document
L504EP	$2	Country code of corresponding patent document
L505EP	DATE8	Publication date of corresponding patent
L506EP	$2	Kind of corresponding patent document
L507EP	$300	List of designated states
L508EP	$2	Extension state
L509EP	$255	New owner name or address if name or address of owner changes; addresses are NOT stored in this tag
L510EP	$700	Free format text
L511EP	$20	SPC number
L512EP	DATE8	Filing date
L513EP	DATE8	Expiry date
L515EP	$255	Inventor name (separated by ;)
L516EP	$50	International Patent Classification (comma separated)
L517EP	$255	Representative's name(s)
L518EP	DATE8	Payment date
L519EP	$50	Opponent name(s)
L520EP	2	Year of fee payment - contains the xxth year for which the payment was made
L521EP	$30	New kind of IPR, new number; e.g. Brazil utility model - code GA;"MI4601602-3"
L522EP	$50	Name of requester
L523EP	DATE8	Extension date
L524EP	$100	List of countries concerned with an event L507EP & L508EP have special significance.
L525EP	DATE8	Effective date; DATE_IN_FORCE
L526EP	DATE8	Date of withdrawal
L527EP	$1	Indicator for format of attribute list document number following rules for either (F)iling applications or (P)ublications. If not known, this tag will not be present; refers to the document given in L503EP and L504EP

Some issues are left out of this post and will be faced soon, like:

- identify macro type of PRSCODE1 and link them to the correct field;
- transpose fields constining more occurrences of same info (FI L507EP with designated states)
- link to patstat via document number.