esp@cenet helpfiles - Patent Families

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Patent Families

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In the patent practice, several definitions are used for a patent family to establish a relationship between a patent document and its priority document or priority documents as mentioned by the Paris Convention.

The three main definitions of patent families will be described here, based on the following example:

Document D1 Priority P1

Document D2 Priority P1 Priority P2

Document D3 Priority P1 Priority P2

Document D4 Priority P2 Priority P3

Document D5 Priority P3

Definition 1:

All the documents which are directly or indirectly linked via a priority document belong to the same patent family.

INPADOC:

This is the definition used by INPADOC.

In this case, the documents D1 to D5 belong to the same patent family P1.

Family P1

Document D1 Priority P1

Document D2 Priority P1 Priority P2

Document D3 Priority P1 Priority P2

Document D4 Priority P2 Priority P3

Document D5 Priority P3

Definition 2:

All the documents having at least one priority in common belong to the same patent family.

List of family members:

This is the definition used by esp@cenet to obtain the list of family documents by entering the Priority Number in the appropriate field in the search form. This will result in the display of the list of Family documents (the hitlist).

Example:

In this case, documents D1, D2 and D3 belong to family P1, documents D2, D3 and D4 to family P2 and the documents D4 and D5 belong to family P3.

Family P1 Family P2 Family P3

Document D1 Priority P1

Document D2 Priority P1 Priority P2

Document D3 Priority P1 Priority P2

Document D4 Priority P2 Priority P3

Document D5 Priority P3

Definition 3:

All the documents having exactly the same priority or priorities in combination, belong to the same patent family.

Reference Document:

This is the definition used by esp@cenet to select the reference document for display in the "document view" from a list of family documents mentioned in the results list (hit-list).

Example:

In this case, document D1 belongs only to family P1, documents D2 and D3 belong to family P1-P2, document D4 belongs only to family P2-P3, and document D5 belongs only to family P3.

Document D1 Priority P1 Family P1

Document D2 Priority P1 Priority P2 Family P1-P2

Document D3 Priority P1 Priority P2 Family P1-P2

Document D4 Priority P2 Priority P3 Family P2-P3

Document D5 Priority P3 Family P3

Note:

After a search, all the documents listed in the hit-list shall be displayed individually in order to be sure that no information is missed. Only displaying the first document of the hit-list is not enough in most of the cases .

Further information:

More information about priority numbers and patent families can be found at the WIPO document on the Paris Convention

Further Reading

: More about Patents

Patent Families
: Minimum PCT Documentation
: The Reference Document
: Full Patents in Facsimile
: The Document Type