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How to find lapse country/date beyond EP Authority

Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2019 12:28 am
by wpark
Dear Geert, Johannes, and Martin:

First, many thanks for your online seminar this morning!

I write because I am interested in the time and country of lapse of the patent applications in my sample. However, I only retrieved lapsed patents associated with the EPO as the application authority. Is there a table or attribute that can provide information on lapses outside of the EP authority? Perhaps I missed it in the Data Catalogue.

Here is the set of commands I used:
SELECT a.appln_id, appln_auth, appln_filing_year, lapse_country, year(lapse_date)
FROM tls201_appln a
JOIN tls207_pers_appln p on a.appln_id = p.appln_id
JOIN tls206_person t on p.person_id = t.person_id
JOIN tls231_inpadoc_legal_event l on a.appln_id = l.appln_id
WHERE lapse_country!=''

and earliest_filing_year>1979 AND earliest_filing_year<2010
and appln_kind='A'
and ipr_type='PI'
and granted='Y'
and invt_seq_nr>0
and (psn_sector='COMPANY' or psn_sector='UNIVERSITY' or psn_sector='GOV NON-PROFIT')
and (person_ctry_code='DE' or person_ctry_code='FR' or person_ctry_code='GB' or person_ctry_code='JP' or person_ctry_code='US')

This generated 6,788 rows, all of which only yielded EP as the application authority.

Now when I remove the link to the tls231_inpadoc_legal_event table and associated variables of interest (please see bold), I retrieve 16,009 rows. And they show patents associated with various other application authorities, like KR, DE, MX, CA, US, and EP. Thus, it seems that my commands linking to the tls231 table only retrieves lapsed applications associated with EP. So, is there a way to find out when the rest of the applications in my sample lapsed (and in which countries)? If I remove the lapse_country!='' criterion, then yes, I do retrieve applications in other authorities, but then the lapse year is all 9999.

Please advise,
Walter

How to find lapse country/date beyond EP Authority

Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2019 11:57 am
by EPO / PATSTAT Support
Hello Walter,
we are happy that you found the PATSTAT seminar useful.
The lapse_country and year(lapse_date) attributes are specifically linked to (granted) EP applications and are not used for any other patents filed at other patent offices.
If you want to get a list of patens that have lapsed covering multiple patent offices you have 2 options:
a) you can check for each of the patent offices which legal event codes are used that would indicate a possible "lapse"
b) if you can accept a "broader" definition of lapse, then you could use the newly introduced categorisation of legal event codes. This approach is modelled on the WIPO ST.27 standard.
inpadoc_classification_scheme_v1.0_en.pdf
(207.04 KiB) Downloaded 289 times
By using the condition " event_category_code = 'H' " you should cover all the legal events across all patent offices which reflect an " IP RIGHT CESSATION ". Using this approach will equally include the EP applications for which national phase applications have lapsed.
A reviewed query could look like:

Code: Select all

SELECT distinct a.appln_id, appln_auth, appln_filing_year, l.event_code,lapse_country, year(lapse_date) lapse,
event_category_code, event_category_title, year(event_publn_date) evt_pub_yr
 FROM tls201_appln a
 JOIN tls207_pers_appln p on a.appln_id = p.appln_id
 JOIN tls206_person t on p.person_id = t.person_id
JOIN tls231_inpadoc_legal_event l on a.appln_id = l.appln_id 
JOIN tls803_legal_event_code on l.event_auth = tls803_legal_event_code.event_auth and l.event_code = tls803_legal_event_code.event_code
 WHERE --lapse_country!='' and
 earliest_filing_year>1979 AND earliest_filing_year<2010
 and appln_kind='A'
 and ipr_type='PI'
 and granted='Y'
 and invt_seq_nr>0
 and psn_sector in ('COMPANY','UNIVERSITY','GOV NON-PROFIT')
 and person_ctry_code in ('DE','FR','GB','JP','US')
 and event_category_code = 'H'
 order by appln_filing_year desc,  appln_id
I added the year of publication of the event to have some kind of date when the event took place.

If you want to have a detailed look at which legal event codes are covered by using the "event_category_code = 'H' " clause, you could run the query below. Based on that list (containg about 400 codes), you have enough information for possible fine tuning your query by explicitly removing further codes that do not fit your purpose.

Code: Select all

SELECT distinct l.event_auth,l.event_code,tls803_legal_event_code.event_category_code, l.event_descr, 
tls803_legal_event_code.event_category_title
FROM tls231_inpadoc_legal_event l 
JOIN tls803_legal_event_code on l.event_auth = tls803_legal_event_code.event_auth 
	and l.event_code = tls803_legal_event_code.event_code
WHERE  event_category_code = 'H'
order by l.event_auth, l.event_code
Another list I find very useful is this excel sheet that illustrates to which extend certain legal event codes are (still) used; basically a coverage of INPADOC data. The SQL on how to make the list is in the document as well.
inpadoc_classification_scheme_v1.0_en.pdf
(207.04 KiB) Downloaded 289 times
I hope this helps.
Geert BOEDT

Re: How to find lapse country/date beyond EP Authority

Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2019 4:22 am
by wpark
Many thanks Geert for your guidance and documentation. You provided the information and coding I was looking for.

All the best,
Walter

Re: How to find lapse country/date beyond EP Authority

Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2019 9:51 pm
by wpark
Hello, I wanted to follow-up.

In the Spring 2018 version of PATSTAT, the table tls803_legal_event_code does not have a variable called "event_category_code".

Is this new information provided in the Autumn 2018 versions on OR was there an equivalent variable or column in the older Spring 2018 version? If so, could you please let us know or suggest an equivalent approach to finding the information?

Thanks.

Re: How to find lapse country/date beyond EP Authority

Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2019 9:31 am
by EPO / PATSTAT Support
Hello,

the categorisations were introduced via table TLS803_LEGAL_EVENT_CODE into PATSTAT starting with the 2018b (Autumn) release.
But there is nothing that should stops users from using the TLS803_LEGAL_EVENT_CODE table in earlier PATSTAT releases. Each record in that table is defined by a unique combination of EVENT_AUTH and EVENT_CODE. So by making a simply JOIN between TLS231_INPADOC_LEGAL_EVENT and TLS803_LEGAL_EVENT_CODE using both attributes, you can use the EVENT_CATEGORY_CODE in earlier PATSTAT versions.

For those users, that do not have the latest version: here is the table:
TLS803_2019b.xlsx
(231.37 KiB) Downloaded 201 times
Geert BOEDT