New legal status codes for US patent applications and granted patents in INPADOC

10 new generic legal status event codes for US patent applications and granted patents are now available in INPADOCDB and INPAFAMDB. The data covers status information for about 80 different status event values created or updated since 1980. Based on information available on the Patent Examination Data System platform of the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the EPO mapped those more than 80 original values onto 10 new generic codes. The EPO announced that they will review the mapping on a regular basis.

The new codes are available in /LSC (Legal Status Code). All 10 codes are assigned to one of the legal status categories in the /LSC2 search field. The USPTO´s original status values are searchable as free text in /LSFT (Legal Status Free Format Text).

These new legal status event codes will be loaded within the next weeks for more than 8.5 million US records. As a consequence, the number of results for a search query or in an SDI that expects US records will increase significantly. New and updated US records will now be delivered regularly with the new codes.

For more details including the complete map of the 10 new generic legal status codes against the 80 original values from the USPTO as well as the EPO´s description go to the STN home page.