...
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legal status is calculated as for any other authority, with the possible values being "Pending", "Abandoned", "Withdrawn", or "Granted".
For granted EP documents, an overall status of "Active", "Withdrawn"Withdrawn, "Revoked"Revoked, "Ceased"Ceased, " or the more generic "Not-in-force" is created, using the Inpadoc legal status events. The status is calculated in one of three ways, illustrated below. In each case the Designated States status is reported in only two generic categories, "In-force" or "Not-in-force":
...
When a patent has reached its full term, the status "Expired – lifetime" will appear at the EP level. Designated Designated States will all be listed with a status of "Not-in-force".
...
When there is a legal status event affecting the EP filing across all authorities (e.g., patent is "Withdrawn", "Revoked", or "Refused"), that status will be displayed at the EP level. Designated States will all be listed with a status of "Not-in-force".
...
During the lifetime of granted EPsEP patents, an individual status is calculated 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“EP”. ” The status at the EP level will be "Active" if any of the designated states has been calculated as active. The Designated States are individually reported as "In-force" or "Not-in-force"."
Case 3.1
If all of the Designated States have the same status (e.g., "Expired - fee related", "Active", etcetc.), the status at the EP level will be that status common to all Designated States.
...
or, similarly, if all Designated States are Active,active:
| Code Block | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ||||
<ifi-patent-status anticipated-expiration="20231017"> <ifi-patent-status-description country="EP">Active</ifi-patent-status-description> <ifi-patent-status-description country="DE">In-force</ifi-patent-status-description> <ifi-patent-status-description country="FR">In-force</ifi-patent-status-description> <ifi-patent-status-description country="GB">In-force</ifi-patent-status-description> </ifi-patent-status> |
...
When a mix of only non-active statuses ("Expired - fee related", "Ceased", "Revoked") occurs among the Designated States, we use a generic "Not-in-force" status at the EP level as well as for the Designated States.
...
Note: If any one designated state has a status of "ActiveIn-force", " 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 Designated States include a single country with no status reported. The The EP in this example has expired in all jurisdictions except HK, but since there is no notice from Hong Kong through the Inpadoc legal status service, we are showing the patent as active "In-force" in HK, and therefore active "Active" at the EP level.
For example:
...
Note: Detailed information about coverage in Inpadoc legal status data can be found at https://www.epo.org/searching-for-patents/helpful-resources/data/tables/weekly.html.