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patent family is a group of patents, all connected in this case by the priority of priorities or a particular patent document. Since patents protect the territorial, so that if a company or a person who wants to protect their invention in one or more countries need for patent protection in these countries - either by filing a national patent applications, or by applying through one of the multi-national routes (EP or PCT application).

The Paris Convention for the Protection of Intellectual Property in 1883 directs that:
# Subsequent notification must be within 1 year (6 months for design patents), in search of protection back to the priority filing date.
# The following submission is the priority number and date, in addition to the new registration number and date.
# The first publication (usually a published application) is available for public inspection 18 months from the priority date.

All publications in connection with a common priority equivalents are defined as members and a related patent family. In some cases, complex relationships between the releases stopped. This leads to multiple, but related priority application from other countries or divisions, continuations or continuations in part.

Differences in patent families

STN: The patent family from CAplus, WPINDEX and INPADOC STN files is very extensive. Difference can occur on land courage, patent kind code coverage, and the date the file is updated. But these are not very accurate, as we have checked for several patents and comparison of information from certain land registry database. Especially EP register is the most updates.

INPADOC: INPADOC patent family is defined as all the sharing of documents, directly or indirectly (eg via a third document) at least one priority. This includes all patent documents, which consist of a patent application, the first application for a patent office and from the same patent application within the priority year with a patent in another country.

Derwent: Derwent patent family uses different mechanism, it collects all the documentation concerning the patent on an invention in a single database. As a rule, a record in Derwent WPI (files 350/351/352) in the dialog is an invention, and shows you all the patent documents Derwent has charged that in connection with this invention.

To summarize, there are currently no single platform and mechanism for the collection of patent families. Best source of individual countries in the registry database, but most of the countries do not have online access to these registry system. In order for a patent professional, you must consult with each patent database to better patent family and legal status information, before making a critical decision.

Vinod Kumar Singh
Content Writer - IP / Patent Intelligence
E-mail: vinod.patent @ gmail.com
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