Different Types of Legal Status
How the Legal Status is linked to the Reporting Date
Measures Utilizing Legal Status
Legal status is a crucial aspect of patent analysis, as it provides insights into the current state of a patent and its enforceability. In PatentSight, we calculate and display legal status information to help you make informed decisions about patent portfolios and competitive landscapes.
How We Calculate Legal Status
PatentSight determines the legal status of a patent based on various events and information recorded in patent office databases. These events include grant, rejection, expiration, lapse, withdrawal, opposition, fee payments and other relevant occurrences that affect the legal status of a patent. Our system regularly updates and processes data from the Patent Register database of the European Patent Office (EPO) and the US Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) provided by the USPTO incorporating the patent term adjustment days, to ensure accurate and up-to-date legal status information.
Different Types of Legal Status
PatentSight provides two types of legal status representations: the “Legal Status” and the “Legal Status Simple”. Depending on the use case and the necessary level of information (e.g. FTO, opposition) the “Legal Status” provides more insight than the “Legal Status Simple”.
Both types of Legal Status can be selected as a filter in the Field Search. To select either of these as a filter option in your search:
| Click the '+More' button whilst in the Field Search. | |
| In the pop up window, select 'Legal Status' then select the legal status filter option to apply it to your search. |
The Legal Status is also shown in the Result List as the PatentSight Default Layout option.
Additionally, it can be used as a measure in tables, for example illustrating all pending patent families or in a chart to visualize the amount of pending patent families against in force patent families.
Legal Status
The Legal Status reflects the specific legal situation of a patent family, with the following possible values:
In Force: The legal status "in force" means that at least one member of the patent family is in force in any authority. This includes granted patents that are still in force.
Pending: The legal status "pending" means that at least one member of the patent family is pending in any authority and that no member of the patent family is in force in any authority. This includes pending applications that are still under prosecution.
Inactive: The legal status "inactive" means that all members of the patent family have become inactive in all authorities (e.g., due to rejection, withdrawal, non-payment of fees, or invalidation) with secure legal status and that no member of the patent family is pending or in force in any authority. We consider legal status as secure if we can trust that we receive all events relevant for termination or cancellation. Today these countries are US, EP, DE, GB, WO, AT, JP, CH, TW, NL, CN, KR.
The legal status also includes the validated status for European Patents (EPs), which is validated at application level and displayed in the results list. For example, if an EP application has been granted and validated in a contracting state, the EP application’s legal status appears as “validated”.
In the result list, the legal status (i.e. inactive, pending or in force) is also indicated individually for each contracting state at document level.
Legal Status Simple
The "Legal Status Simple" is a condensed representation that groups patents into two categories either “active” or “inactive”.
Active: The legal status "active" means that at least one member of the patent family is either pending or in force in any authority. This includes both pending applications that are still under prosecution and granted patents that are still in force.
Inactive: The legal status "inactive" means that all members of the patent family have become inactive in all authorities (e.g., due to rejection, withdrawal, non-payment of fees, or invalidation) with secure legal status and that no member of the patent family is pending or in force in any authority. We consider legal status as secure if we can trust that we receive all events relevant for termination or cancellation.
How the legal status is linked to the Reporting Date
The legal status of a patent is determined based on the reporting date. We provide reporting dates for each year on Dec 31st since the year 2000 to present, and for a current reporting date which we update each week. This date is crucial for accurate in-force patent information, as it ensures that the legal status reflects the most recent events and changes recorded for the patent.
Measures Utilizing Legal Status
Legal status is a key factor in various patent analysis measures and metrics available in PatentSight. For example, the measure “Number of Applications With Legal Status Selected” provides detailed insight into the legal status of patent portfolios of companies or technology areas.
If you have a template table with “Patent Family Details”, you can add this measure to your table, and it will show you for example, the number of all granted patents within a patent family. To do this:
| Click the banner at the top of the table, where the title shows | |
| Select the cog icon. (Once selected, click the ‘+’ icon next to 'measures'.) | |
| Select Applications under ‘Add Measure’ | |
| Select ‘Number of applications with legal status selected’ | |
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Click Confirm to select 'all applications irrespective of their legal status'. |