Unified Patents launches Unified IP Services with experienced Search team

Unified recently welcomed Tom Kepner and John Wootress to launch patent search services and lead a highly experienced search team. For nearly a decade, this team has consistently delivered exceptional patentability, invalidity, freedom-to-operate (FTO), and landscape searches for numerous clients within the High-Tech and Life Science fields. The team has received many accolades worldwide and has won two PATROLL contests with prior art submitted on a set of Theranos patents.

Unified can now offer its members even more valuable services and marks an important new phase in its expansion. The IP Services team excels at uncovering difficult-to-find prior art and presenting it effectively to help companies understand: the white space and potentially problematic patents within their targeted technology areas; or the likelihood of success before the USPTO when filing for patent protection or to invalidate patents.

For more information, visit www.unifiedips.com or email us at info@unifiedips.com.

INPADOC Extended Families can now be searched on Unified's Portal

Unified Patents’ Portal now includes INPADOC Extended families. You can now search by and expand by Extended Family ID.

Or have that information displayed or exported in Portal:

These features are available in the Patent Search portal, as well as OPAL’s IEEE, 3GPP, and Video Codec landscapes, to enable accurate top-down counting and analysis. 

DOCDB simple families typically include a collection of patent applications covering the same technical content.

The charts below describe how a set of patents can have 4 separate simple families. The priorities taken into account are:

1. First filings - A first filing is a foreign application claimed under the Paris Convention.

2. Provisional first filings - A provisional first filing is a U.S. provisional application.

3. Equivalents to first filings - An equivalent to a first filing is a U.S. continuation-in-part.

The concept of a “simple” family excludes:

• Applications that are a continuation of an existing parent application

• Applications that are a division of an existing parent application

Continuations and divisions are considered to cover the same technical content as the parent application. Continuations and divisions will always be in a patent family with the parent application, regardless of the priorities that they claim.

Figure 1 - DOCDB SIMPLE FAMILY

Figure 2 - INPADOC EXTENDED FAMILY

(Landscape Study of Potentially Essential Patents Disclosed to ETSI)

An extended patent family is a collection of patent documents covering a technology. The technical content covered by the applications is similar, but not necessarily the same. Members of an extended patent family will have at least one priority in common with at least one other member - either directly or indirectly. Hence, the four families above, become one extended family.

Therefore, the priorities taken into account are:

• First filings, provisional first filings, and equivalents to first filings (for definitions of these terms, see above)

• Priorities that refer to an earlier related application, whether a domestic or a PCT filing

Click HERE to see Unified’s INPADOC extended families search capabilities.