MARPAT^® Enhanced with Patent Status Data

Effective October 2, 2021, MARPAT records will include Patent Status data. This information is critical for Freedom to Operate searches and for strategic business decisions, including patent acquisition and licensing and for competitive purposes. Patent Status Indicator data will be updated several times a week and the data in MARPAT will be consistent with what is found in CAplusSM.

Patent Status Indicators are calculated and provided by FIZ Karlsruhe based on over 4.1K legal status codes from INPADOCDB, as well as corresponding gazette data and/or calculated expiration dates.

The calculated STI will identify whether a patent is ALIVE, DEAD, TRANSITIONAL or INDETERMINATE. The Patent Status Established Date (STED) provides the date on which the status was initially calculated, or last changed.

A patent depicted in the PSPI table will have only one of these STI values at any given time. The possible STI values are defined as follows:

• LIVE means that the application is still under active prosecution, or that the granted patent is in force.
• DEAD means that the application is no longer being pursued, or that the rights granted to the IP holder are no longer in force, due to expiry, withdrawal by the IP rights holder, permanent cancellation due to non-payment of fees past any deadlines, etc. The DEAD Patent Status Indicator is assigned only when there is no chance that the patent is still ALIVE.
  • Patents which have no source INPADOC legal status data  will be deemed ALIVE unless they have reached their  calculated expiration date based on the application date.
  • Patents can exist with no status due to either differences  in coverage by FIZ or because the data has yet to be integrated into  CAS databases.
• TRANSITIONAL refers to the period when the latest legal status  event (such as a withdrawal or a lapse due to non-payment of  fees) indicates that the patent may be on its way to becoming  DEAD. If the patent is neither reinstated after a withdrawal,  or the renewal fees not paid, then the patent will become DEAD six months after the initial legal event date. An event such as  payment of renewal fees would return a TRANSITIONAL status to  ALIVE.
• INDETERMINATE is specific to EP grants. EP grants will be INDETERMINATE until the calculated expiration date. Because there can be a large volume of legal status events involving EP grants, some of which are reflected in or duplicated by the national offices and others which are not, it is difficult to provide a meaningful Patent Status for the EP grant as a whole. It may instead be worthwhile to check the national registers of countries of interest.

The PSPI table is automatically included in predefined displays such as BIB, ALL and MAX, but can also be custom displayed using D PSPI (alias D STI) or D PSPI.B (displays the STI information for only the basic patent).

The MARPAT Database Summary Sheet at: https://www.cas.org/sites/default/files/documents/marpat_100121.pdf has been updated to reflect the PSPI enhancement.