First family publication

Here you can post your opinions, ask questions and share information regarding GPI (Searching the EPO’s worldwide bibliographic, legal event and full-text data sets via the “Patent information services for experts” user interface).
Post Reply

mktaylor
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Feb 14, 2019 8:34 pm

First family publication

Post by mktaylor » Thu Feb 14, 2019 8:48 pm

Is it possible, when searching in GPI, to limit the results to only the first family member publication within a certain date range? If so, what is the proper field name/criteria language?

Thank you!


EPO / EPAL Team
Posts: 139
Joined: Mon Dec 22, 2014 8:30 am

Re: First family publication

Post by EPO / EPAL Team » Fri Feb 15, 2019 11:13 pm

The search filter used by default in GPI is the simple family filter: For a given family, should there be multiple family members matching the search, the result list will include the oldest family member.

For example, word= laser /2w beam* returns EP 2383387 A1 published on 2011.11.02 and EP 2383387 B1 published on 2013.10.09 and the result list includes only the A1 document (the oldest publication of the family).

If the query includes a date constraint such as a publication date range (pud) then the result is different.
For example, word = laser /2w beam* and pud [2013, 2014] return the B1 document because the publication date of the A1 is not in the range.

Does this answer your question?

Note that the family filter and the application filter are disabled if the search returns more than 1 000 000 publications. In this case all publications of all applications of all families are in the result list.

Best regards,

Patrick Le Gonidec


mktaylor
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Feb 14, 2019 8:34 pm

Re: First family publication

Post by mktaylor » Sat Feb 16, 2019 6:15 pm

Thank you very much, Patrick.

I am using a date range and limiting the results to only certain publication country codes. I would like to limit the results to only those country codes on the desired topic that published during the desired date range and are the first to publish for that family within that group of country codes. For instance, searching:
(TIEN = (laser /2w beam*) OR ABEN = (laser /2w beam*)) AND (PUC = EP OR US OR WO) AND (PUD = 2018)

includes US 2018368671 A1. However, its simple family also includes WO 2017154333 A1, which would be the first publication for that family. Therefore US 2018368671 A1 would not be desired in the results set because it had an earlier published family member.

Is there a way to limit the search results to exclude these kinds of situations or do I need to go through all the results one by one to exclude those that have earlier published family members with those country codes?

Thank you.

Best regards,
MK Taylor


EPO / EPAL Team
Posts: 139
Joined: Mon Dec 22, 2014 8:30 am

Re: First family publication

Post by EPO / EPAL Team » Sun Feb 17, 2019 9:24 pm

Thank you for your explanation,

To date, the service is not able to do what you describe. When the service creates a result list, it groups publications according to the selected search filter (application, family, or no filter) and this process is a kind of hidden search. Therefore all publications that are being grouped must match your search, which is not the case of WO 2017154333 A1 published in 2017.

Even if family representatives and family members can be added in the result list and document content re-ordered, e.g. to display the family at the top of a document (see menu Preferences / options Result list content and Document content) , it may be time consuming to check every result list entry or document.

We will look into the feasibility of your proposal but we cannot promise to change the current behaviour.

Best regards,

Patrick Le Gonidec


Post Reply