Old IFI Patent Status for EP

These rules were effective through May 21, 2017. We switched to a new method of calculating patent status on May 22, 2017. For details regarding the new method of calculation, see New IFI Patent Status for EP.


For A-stage EP documents, legal status is calculated as for any other authority, with the possible values being "Pending", "Abandoned", "Withdrawn", or "Granted".

For granted EP documents, the status is calculated in one of three ways, two of which entail a single status at the EP level:

Case 1

When a patent has reached its full term, the status "Expired - Lifetime" will appear at the EP level and no Designated States will be included in the ifi-patent-status-description container.

For example:

<ifi-patent-status anticipated-expiration="20150606">
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="EP">Expired - Lifetime</ifi-patent-status-description>
</ifi-patent-status>


Case 2

When there is a legal status event affecting the EP filing across all authorities (e.g., patent is "Withdrawn", "Revoked", or "Refused"), there will be a single EP-level status, and no Designated States will be listed in the ifi-patent-status container.

For example:

<ifi-patent-status anticipated-expiration="20300904">
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="EP">Revoked</ifi-patent-status-description>
</ifi-patent-status>


Case 3

During the lifetime of granted EPs, an individual status is reported for each Designated State, with a default status of "Active" when no event affecting the current status is present. Based on the individual country-by-country status, an overall status is calculated, which is present with an attribute of “EP”. The status at the EP level will be "Active" if any of the Designated States has been calculated as "Active".

       

Case 3.1

If all of the Designated States have the same status (e.g., "Expired - Fee Related", "Active", etc.), the status at the EP level will be that status common to all Designated States.  

For example:

<ifi-patent-status anticipated-expiration="20231017">
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="EP">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="DE">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="FR">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="GB">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
</ifi-patent-status>


Case 3.2

When a mix of non-active statuses occurs among the Designated States, we follow a hierarchy in determining the status to report at the EP level. The hierarchy is as follows:

Expired-Fee-Related

Ceased

Revoked

For example:

<ifi-patent-status anticipated-expiration="20170110">
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="EP">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="DE">Revoked</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="GB">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
</ifi-patent-status>


Note: If any one Designated State has a status of "Active", the EP-level status will also be "Active".


Case 3.3 (Special impact of the default status being "Active")

The following example (EP-1777190-B1) illustrates the use of the default "Active" status in a record whose Designated States include a single country with no status reported. The EP in this example has expired in all jurisdictions, but since there is no notice from Hong Kong through the INPADOC legal status service, we are showing the patent as "Active" in HK, and therefore "Active" at the EP level.

For example:

<ifi-patent-status anticipated-expiration="20261009">
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="EP">Active</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="AT">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="BE">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="BG">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="CH">Ceased</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="CY">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="CZ">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="DE">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="DK">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="EE">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description> 
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="ES">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description> 
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="FI">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="FR">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="GB">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="GR">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="HK">Active</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="HU">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="IE">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="IS">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="IT">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="LI">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="LT">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="LU">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="LV">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="MC">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="NL">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="PL">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="PT">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="RO">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="SE">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="SI">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="SK">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
  <ifi-patent-status-description country="TR">Expired - Fee Related</ifi-patent-status-description>
 <ifi-term-extension/>
</ifi-patent-status>


Note: Detailed information about INPADOC legal status data and coverage can be found at https://www.epo.org/searching-for-patents/helpful-resources/raw-data/data/tables/weekly.html.