Measuring Application Backlog

[vlad.varbanov]

Hi All,

Could someone please provide guidance regarding which tables and respective attributes I could use to estimate application backlog at a given national patent office? For example, how can I count the number of applications under active examination as well as the number of applications for which work has been completed in a given year (i.e withdrawn, denied or granted patent)? I reckon I should be able to utilize the legal status information in tables tls802_legal_event_code and tls221_inpadoc_prs to identify the different stages in an application's lifecycle, but I would really appreciate more detailed guidance in the event someone has done this already.

Thank you in advance!

V.

[Geert Boedt]

Hello Vlad,
with the present PATSTAT edition is is not possible to do that in an easy way. The only option I would see is to analyse the appropriate legal status codes in the tls221_inpadoc_prs table. The problem is that different countries use different codes.
Here is a sample query that will give you the EP patents that have been refused, revoked or withdrawn:

SELECT TOP 1000 appln_auth
,appln_nr
,appln_kind
,appln_filing_date
,appln_filing_year
,tls221_inpadoc_prs.prs_code
,prs_gazette_date
,lec_descr
FROM tls201_appln join tls221_inpadoc_prs on tls201_appln.appln_id = tls221_inpadoc_prs.appln_id
join tls802_legal_event_code on tls221_inpadoc_prs.lec_id = tls802_legal_event_code.lec_id
where prs_code in ('18R','27W','18W')
order by tls201_appln.appln_id

The prs_gazette_date can be used to see when the event happened (or did not happen yet).
To do this kind of research in a comprehensive way for all patent authorities will be a major task. You will need to check the various legal status codes that might be of relevance for your study.
Here you will find a list of the legal status codes: http://www.epo.org/searching/data/data/ ... gular.html Check for the xsl "Categorisation of recently used legal status codes"

In the near future we will also have the "European Patent Register for PATSTAT" . That database has a "status" attribute that make it easier to extract (EP) patents according to their "status".