The Legal Status Watch feature is getting updated, and several things are being improved that will make your workflow easier and more efficient.
But first things first: what is the legal status watch?
The legal status watch monitors patent documents for their legal changes, i.e if a patent gets granted, if it expires, if the applicant changes, if an opposition is filed or any other legal event change during the lifetime of a patent.
IamIP has developed a specific algorithm in order to show you at any time the legal status of a patent application, which is indicated by a traffic light symbol:
- A red sign for patent applications that are not alive anymore
- A yellow sign for patent application that are still pending and
- A green light for patent applications which are currently in force
Why is this important to know?
The legal status data of e.g. a competitor’s patent is very important and can have a significant impact on your business decision in case you want to
- Start launching a product in a specific country,
- Take a decision on continuing or stopping an R&D project, or
- Understand the potential impact a 3rd party patent application may have on your business
If the patent application is still pending, you can expect that it won’t be granted, so a good step would be to set up a Legal status watch in the IAMIP platform.
How our Legal Status Watch function looked like until now?
Legal events are published by the national patent offices and is there e.g. available via the national registers.
Thus, a surveillance at the individual national patents offices per national patent application is possible. However, wouldn’t it be easier to be able to monitor the whole patent family in regards to all national patent applications and countries with just a click in one tool without the need to switch between these multiple national registers?
IamIP gives you that possibility as we get the legal status data from the INPADOC database which covers more than 50 patent authorities. We have more than 1 billion legal events in our legal events database which means that our legal status watch function allows you to trace or monitor the patent and the legal changes in the IamIP platform without having to go to the different websites of each patent offices.
So, if there is a document that you want to follow you can activate the legal status watch by clicking on the Wi-Fi icon next to the share button in the toolbar and then a symbol “Watched” will indicate that the patent family is monitored for a legal status watch. If there is a change in that patent family for example the European Patent Application has become granted you will get an email notification and the patent will appear in the middle of the home page of the platform.
What’s new?
The Legal Status Watch feature has received many improvements as we adapted it to only update our users for changes that really concerns them. Thus, our users are now able to choose for a given patent family, a specific country(ies) and /or specific event types that should be monitoring according to their needs. You can see how the new version looks like compared to the older one and how many more options you have now. You are even able to invite a colleague of yours to participate in this legal status watch, if you believe its really important for him and for transparency purposes you now have the chance to leave a LSW Description.
Legal Status Watch 2.0 offers new improvements in five different categories:
1.Process: the process of setting up a legal status watch is changing as now you have more options. You can choose a country or countries to track in a patent family. So, from now on you can choose not to be alerted for the entire patent family. So, if your market of interest is only France, Germany, and Italy you can only monitor these.
You will also have the possibility to choose the legal event to monitor. If you are only interested in tracking events such as grants, payments, and appeal, opposition, re-examination, limitation as shown it will be possible.
Additionally, you will be able to add a comment and even choose the receiver of the notification in case of a change. So, if you share a portfolio with more than 10 people for example, you can choose the receiver instead of having everyone notified.
2. Handling of captured events: There’s now a new “manage events” drop down menu that you can use to sort and manage the captured events. So, you will have the option to hide or to show events.
3. Search: Now, when you are investigating a single patent application deeper, you will have an option to filter for the legal events that are of interest for you by clicking on the dot next to the data field name.
You will, also, be able to use the filtering function in a portfolio, to monitor the patent for only one country instead of the whole patent family. If you choose a country, like shown here, Switzerland you will get results only for documents where the Swiss application was granted.
4. New Data Fields: this improvement also changes how the legal status history looks like. We integrated new data fields in our database that we show to you in the legal status history, which will help you to quicker understand the impact of the legal event.
5. Filtering: With the updated version you will be able to use the filtering function in a portfolio for only one country instead of for the whole patent family. If you choose a country, like shown here with Switzerland you will get results only for documents where the Swiss patent application was granted.
The advantages of the updated Legal Status Watch
You might wonder why the feature got updated and what are the advantages it will provide you with in your patent monitoring process. You’ll be getting important gains such as:
- more visibility on an event
- less notifications: you will only be alerted when there are changes for the specific country or countries you chose, when there are changes for the specific event or events you chose and you can define who should be alerted by a change
- personalized tracking
- better communication with colleagues
- easier to check the history
- better traceability of events: they do not disappear
- saves time
You can watch a video summary of our new feature here:
