EPO - Discussion forums

We are receiving no results in response to INPADOC Patent Family queries. For instance, on the informational page, US5402857 is given as an example (https://www.epo.org/searching/essential ... padoc.html). However, searching for US5402857 and clicking the "INPADOC patent family" tab results in: "0 application(s) for: US5402857 (A)"

We've attempted to clear our cache / browsing history on our end. Is something going on with ESPACENET or on our end? Any advice would be appreciated.

Many thanks in advance.

I would like to add that the INPADOC patent family now provides some results but it appears to be incomplete. For the test case mentioned above, US5402857, only 42 results are returned (even after loading more results). The INPADOC informational page states that there should be 81 results.

We had a technical problem displaying the INPADOC Patent Families on 22 December and the issue was resolved on 23 December.

The reason why you receive a different number of family members in Espacenet to that mentioned in the example you have quoted from here (https://www.epo.org/searching/essential ... padoc.html) is due to the de-duplication of results in Espacenet.

The result list from Espacenet contains 42 patent family members as it excludes equivalent publications. While you scroll or browse through results lists in Espacenet, the system removes equivalent family members. The list of family members in the example quoted above is derived from OPS (Open Patent Services) and includes the equivalent publications.

For example, there is one hit for EP0997607 in the result list in Espacenet. When you consult the bibliographic data of this document you will find two more publications under "Also published as", the A3 and the B publications. In the PDF example, all three documents are indicated separately.

I hope this answers your query.

Kind regards,

The Patent Information User Support Team

Many thanks for your prompt and complete response!