[MUSIC] Welcome to the first lecture on document types. This is, in fact, a lecture on how go use the American database public pair to follow US filings through a samination until the final issue of a patent if that happens or If it fails. And in order to use such a database effectively, you need a basic understanding of the filing process as such. And so, I will do a bit of growing on the back in the envelope in just a second. Before we get to the various document types, and the database that we're going to discuss today, it's important that we have a basic understanding of the filing process. In order to do that we draw timelines of the life of a patent application. You would do that many times. They don't need to be pretty. Do it on the back of the envelope. And you would do it repeatedly during this course. So let's take a look what happens when you make an invention at a certain point zero. Time begins. And what happened at this point was that you submitted a priority application. What is a priority application? A priority application is something that you submit to the patent authorities where you want to establish priority. That is a filing date. This was the date when this inventions was first filed, the list first filled by you. Then time passes and if you date that is not very often today you find it in one country, then after a certain period of time, the patent authorities would begin examination. This is hardly readable, but I'm sure you get the meaning. And then, surely your application will be processed, and it will become a patent, or it would be rejected depending on whether you fulfill the criteria of novelty. Inventive step and industrial capability. However, as I said, this is not the way it is usually done. Something happens at month 12. So here we have month 12. And here you file the international, finding of your application. Now, in those 12 months, your application remains secrets and nothing happens to it. If you are in Europe, you would around this time, tell the patent authority that they should not begin an examination because your intention is not to have a national patent issued. Your intention is that you will file an international application after 12 months. Now, the few little ringles to this, if we say that in that priority you did describe your invention A. And then, you continue work in the laboratory and offer three months. You actually figure out that you can do your invention a little bit better or use it for one more thing that you are really anticipated. So at this point in time, here we have time 0 and here we have 3 months. And at this point in time, you actually submit a new party application that describes your original invention A and then you add some new material to it, A prime. And when you then finally submit your international finding here at months 12, then you will cling back to P2 and P1. Now, what are the neuro priority date for your patent application here at month 12? Well, you have actually two, because if you end up in a dispute in court who was first to file an invention that covers A, this would be your priority. But if somebody else actually publishes or finds an application here at month two that describes a prime. Then, eventually the examination will tell you that the names in your internationally findings that relates to the a prime theme will have to go away whereas you have priority on the a part of the application relative to the competitor that either published or filed at month number two. At month number 18, something else happens. And what happens here is not something that you submit, but something that comes out of it, and that's a publication. Now, your application is published. And that is done by the authorities, and that happens rather automatically. What happens hereafter is that the examination now begins. However, as you have heard, patterns are national rights, so this being an international finding then this system cannot issue a patent for you, but they can judge patentability. And that has various components to this examination that we will deal with in a later video. But this is prerequisite for understanding what we are going to do in a minute. The prosecution of a patent application produces a number of different documents as the application moves through the system. And you should be able to recognize several of these, and let's see some of the more important ones. Firstly, for an international application is the PCT application or rather the application resulting from a PCT application that's what you're seeing here and the document type is very easy to recognize international application properties under the Patent Cooperation Treaty in the top line and then you have the PCT. And a number preceded by WO. It also has a suffix, A3 in this case, and that tells you something about whether this application is a search report or has a search report appended to it. This is actually a standalone search report, it's written down here. It's published with an international search report. Then, here is an application, published by the US PGO, the American System used United States Patent Application Publication. Again, it's very easy to recognize this as a document type of being a publication and the number. It has the year included in it. It too has a suffix, but that merely tells you that this is an application, it has nothing to do with whether there are search reports or not in the American system. If such an application resolves in a patent, that's what it looks like. This is a United States Patent, again easy to see what document type is. It has a number, it's as does not have the year included in the number and it has a suffix that means something. A little bit later we will take a look at the patent document codes table and look up what this particular patent, what it means for this particular patent. And then finally, here is a European issued patent it's called the European Patent Specification. And it has a number which instantly is shared with the application that went before it and it also has a surface that can be looked up in the patent kind code document. You should now be familiar with the patenting process in general terms. But in order to turn this into a practical skilled, you need to be able to sort out document types resulting from a patenting process. We will illustrate this by going through first, a simple US-filing example then it well complicate a PCT/EP-filing and eventually, we will introduce this week's quiz. We are using different databases in this course, as you already know. Derwent Innovation index plays a key role, especially in patent searching, but we will use it as an entry point also here. Remember that Derwent is a commercial database, we cannot provide you with access to it, we trust that your university library does that. Derwent innovation intakes is member of the Weber Science Family and this is the interface that meets you when you log in. So now we need to change it to the Dervent Innovation intakes database, and also to advanced search, which we will always use no matter which database we are employing during this course. To access Derwent Innovation Index we will use this drop down menu up here. And changing to the Advanced Search Interface occurs via the other drop down menu. And when we do that a table of field tags appears on the right. We will use just one of them, PN for patent number, in order to look up a particular document that I think that we should all know about. When you click Search, you'll get a list of results and for search regarding a particular pattern number, the number of hits is obviously just one. And when we click that, we will get incorporation of foreign genes into microorganisms. This is the original cloning pattern by Boyer and Comen from Stanford University, a pattern that forms the basis of much of biotechnology. The patent process comprise four priority document as you can see here down at the bottom through 1974 to 79. The last one of these is then the final application that we saw in a issued patent, the year after in 1980. This patent will then remain valid for 17 years according to the old U.S. system. Remember that the U.S. in the old days entertained the system of first to invent, this means that there could, in theory be even earlier publications that could be damaging to this patent. But here we have the front page and you can see where these pieces of information prior out that was cited in the patent for example. And then you can see the patenting process where you have continuation part that means and please consult the textbook. That new things were added at each step of the filing process until 1979, where the patent was eventually examined and issued. Here I've scrolled to the last page to the patent with the claims, claim number one is the broadest one that defines the scope of the patent. Such a claim has to be a standalone sentence, one sentence only, that allows people to completely understand what the patent is all about. How to read or phrase such claims will be the subject of future videos but right now, we will return to defining process. This was an example of the old way of applying for, and prosecuting, a patented US system. Please consult the textbook and make sure that you appreciate the differences between the old system and the new system in the US. Now let us examine a contemporary US filing. I've selected a patent for you within the area of Glyco Engineering and here you have the number of the pub;ished application and here the number of the issued patent. If we scroll down we see that it's based on two priority application. The first one from 2003, happens to be a provisional application. And exactly one year later, the real application is filed. Therein provides buttons to access the original documents, and let's try that with a published application Identifying document types is not difficult, as you can see here its spelled out loud and clear, United States Patent Application Publication. So this document is produced by the patent authorities on the basis of the, submitted application. The date over here is the date of publication, not the filing date. And up here, you have the number of the publication with the year included. The application number is stated here, and note this format that's the format that you will need later on in order to follow prosecution. And down here in the bottom you have with a similar number format the provisional application that began the entire process. And then let us move onto the issued patent. Again, we click the overview button, and this is the front page, again, it's easy to see what it is, United States Patent. And over here, you have a date, that's the date of issue, again, not the filing date. And then above you have the patent number and it carries the suffix B2, what does that tell us? What we need is a table of document kind codes. We prepare a website that provides a link to one of these here and many others out there fo you to find. But lets take a look at this one. Let us first look at the situation prior to 2001 back then when patents carried a suffix. At that time, B2 went in, re-examination certificate after second re-examination. That's not the case anymore, nowadays the B2 means granted patent as second publication. What does that actually mean? This means that there is a prior publication to the issued patent, that one in our case being the 2005 population application. You might not wonder should not always be the case after 2001 when application are automatically published. Well, not quite you can apply for keeping your application a secret until the issue of your patent if you state that it will not be pursued outside the US. Now, if we compare this definition the new as well as the old with the European situation, Then we will notice the following B2 patent after modification. When is a patent modified? It is modified when the inventors are forced to submit amended claim set in order to satisfy directions from the examiner, for example. So the B2 in Europe Is a lot closer to the pre-test at one meaning in the US. The next thing we wish to do is to take a look over the shoulder of the patent examiner during prosecution and get our hands on documents that are not publications as such. In order to do that, we will go to the patent database link on the companion website. And there, we'll find the US Public Pair. We will get to this page, we don't have an issue or patent, so we can select that and type in the patent number. This has been the record in the public peer database. What do you we see here? We will see the patent number listed here. We see the earliest publication number, the 2005 publication, here and we will see the original application up here. What then about the provisional application? Well, we have to go to the Continuity Data tab in order to see that, because we see that here. And if we click on that, and, Here we can actually get to see what it looked like, the original application. As you can see, the patent warrant is still very much paper based, at least the scanned images, non-surgical text of interest might be to see what the real claims look like. And you can see here, an isolated polypeptide having glycosyltransferase activity, wherein the isolated polypeptide, and so on and so forth. This is claim number one, the broadest claim back then. It might be of interest to compare that to the similar claim in the issued patent. The next thing we might want to do is take a look at the transaction history. And you can see here, you can follow only admins from beginning prosecution in September 2004 and onwards. More interesting perhaps, is the image file wrapper, where we can actually see and download each of the files here. It is noteworthy that we have claims being submitted in 2005. We have claims being submitted again in 2007 meaning that it is, and again in 2008, meaning that the final pattent probably does not have a patent claim set similar to the one on the provision application. The next thing that we could be interested in is finding out whether this patent is actually in force. Click the the Fees tab and you get a new window. And in order to access the statements we will need both the patent number and the application number, which we paste in and then click Continue. And here we have it you can see the Facebook page for the first three and a half years and that there are no maintenance fee due at this time. We will have to get back here at August 10th in order to see if the amenders intent to continue keeping this patent alive. We are now ready to put everything on the timeline. First, the provisional application, then the real application exactly one year later. Then the published application, and finally the issued patent. Now you might wonder why do we bother with this analysis? Well it's all related to freedom to operate analysis. We assume here that you're into glico engineering and these inventors are your comparisons, so you're following their patent and causes. So therefore you will and in this first case we assume that the patent has not yet been issued. Then you look over the shoulder of the examiner and follow the process and try to figure out whether you think they will get the patent or not. And if they get the patent, you are interested in how broad a scope the broadest claim will cover. So you will compare the earliest publications that you can get access to with amended claim sense of whatever that I have submitted during the prosecution process. Now in the other situation where your freedom to operate and that issued kind of patent has been issued as in this case. Then you will wonder whether it is enforced, if it is not enforced anymore because the inventors do not pay the fees then it is merely prior R. But if it is enforced and if the broadest claim has been reduced during the prosecution process. You will be interested in this, because the reasons that they could not get everything that they wanted are probably, will probably also apply to you. If you they couldn't get something past the examiner, you probably cannot either. So that's motivated, we will move to a more complicated case in the European and PCT system in the following video. But before you move on to the next video I would encourage you to recap. Make sure that you have a good understanding of what can be read from the front page information, that you can recognize number formats and the suffixes that the numbers often carry. We have so far looked at one of the databases that we can use for following prosecution, the US Public Pier. And I think that learning by doing is best so that you should actually retrace the steps of this video and make sure that you can operate the US Public Pier on your own accord. And then I think that you should read on finding in the US in these chapters in the textbook. [MUSIC]
