Keeping track of numerous parallel applications is a challenge for companies and inventors, though many patents are linked as a "family" (applications for the same invention filed at multiple offices) through common priority dates. We launched several initiatives in 2014 to help our users manage their applications more effectively and thus save time and money by providing a single point of access to information on how their applications are progressing at different patent offices.
As part of its co-operation in the grouping of the five largest IP offices
in the world (known as the "IP5"), the EPO with China's State Intellectual Property Office
(SIPO) introduced a new service in 2014 called the Global Dossier.
It provides a free online file inspection (also known as a "file wrapper")
service that allows users to access SIPO's publicly
available documents directly on the EPO website - on both the European Patent Register (for
files of any Chinese family member of a European patent application) and Espacenet (useful for
retrieving file wrappers from China that do not have a European family member).
In addition, automatic machine translation is built in to provide
English-language versions of the Chinese original documents. In 2015 the Global Dossier service will be extended to include
file-wrapper data from the remaining IP5
offices too, namely KIPO, JPO and the USPTO.
Another example of consolidating information from many
sources is our ongoing effort to improve access to legal status information in
Europe by means of the Federated
European Patent Register service. Thanks
to the first phase of this project, called "deep linking", the user can
directly access the online registers of national patent offices across Europe. Launched
from the European Patent Register in 2011, the number of deep-linked countries is
steadily rising. In 2014 two more countries were added. This means that the post-grant legal status
of European patents in the national phase (for currently 27 patent offices) can
be ascertained very quickly. A similar deep-linking functionality is
progressively being added to Espacenet, allowing users to find the legal status
for national applications without an EP family member. This functionality has
so far been implemented in 16 member states.
The Common Citation Document (CCD), another tool available through the EPO's global
patent database Espacenet, also saw its scope extended in 2014, with the
addition of citation data from China's SIPO. The CCD consolidates the prior art
cited by all participating patent offices for the family members of a patent
application, thus enabling the search results for the same invention produced
by several offices to be viewed on a single page. Thanks to recent efforts, the
tool now gives users a consolidated view of search reports from 30 patent
authorities - including the five largest IP offices in the world - via a single
entry point.
