INPADOC Extended family explanation

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reydoog
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2020 2:48 pm

INPADOC Extended family explanation

Post by reydoog » Mon Jun 15, 2020 3:02 pm

Hi,

I have read the explanations and understand the differences between a simple (DOCDB) patent family and an extended INPADOC patent family (as helpfully explained here http://documents.epo.org/projects/babyl ... EPO_en.pdf).

I am, however, struggling to apply this practically. For example, I'm looking at the extended patent family for EP1234565 (https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publica ... cale=en_EP) and cannot work out how the series of patents entitled "Mattress Assembly" are related to the series entitled "Laminated Air Brake Tubing". The Mattress Assembly patents all seem to have a different set of inventors, a different assignee, a different priority date and a set of different priority applications to the ones entitled "Laminated Air Brake Tubing". They appear totally unrelated to me. What am I missing or is this just an error / misclassification?

Thanks


EPO / OPS Support
Posts: 1298
Joined: Thu Feb 22, 2007 5:32 pm

Re: INPADOC Extended family explanation

Post by EPO / OPS Support » Tue Jun 16, 2020 7:51 am

HI,

You found an error, yes. Information on family pages on our website is 100% correct and constantly reviewed so you really can rely on it.

Sometimes it happens that the priority of certain document is incorrectly set (can come due to manually added info by examiner or other issues in data) which causes the linkage of two unrelated inventions into a family. In Espacenet you will find an error button and you can always use it to inform us about potential correction issue, like this case. My colleague in charge corrections already had a look at the case and she separated the families by fixing issue in IL-D0 record (D0 is not loaded in Espacenet, only real publications are, and D0 is only notification, but in the backend database she saw the issue was caused by that record) that had wrong PCT-inactive-priority which wrongly linked the two families.

Please note that extended family only gets re-calculated over the weekend so the changes she made will not be visible until Monday.

If you have more questions on data and families contact us via Open Patent Services (OPS) and bulk data subscription products forum or write us an email: patentdata(at)epo.org. We will gladly assist you further.

Regards,
Vesna for OPS and Patent Data team


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