The Patent Status stored in the IFI container is created and maintained to display the latest recorded status, which affects whether the patent is still in force or, in the case of applications, whether the application is pending, granted, or inactive. In creating this status indicator, we track the sequence of legal status events reported to the EPO from the national offices and delivered in the Inpadoc file and map them to a distinct set of values. IFI's patent status indicator is a useful estimate but should not be considered authoritative. An attorney or the relevant patent office should be consulted for an authoritative expiration and status determination.
Possible Values for Published Applications:
- Pending*
- Withdrawn
- Abandoned
- Granted
- Ceased
Possible Values for Granted Patents and Utility Models:
- Active
- Active - Reinstated
- Expired - Lifetime
- Expired - Fee Related
- Expired**
- Withdrawn - After Issue
- Ceased
- Revoked
- In-force (Designated States only)
- Not-in-force (Designated States only)
*In records with a filing date over 20 years old, the "Pending" status may simply indicate that we have not received any further information about that record from the patent authorities.
**The generic "Expired" indicator is used for all patents published before 1990, regardless of whether an expiration date has been calculated for them and regardless of prior legal status events such as fee-related expirations or withdrawals, revocations, etc.
Impact of Supplementary Protection Certificates and their term extensions:
For some US and for all other authorities, the existence of a term extension or Supplementary Protection Certificate is indicated by a "regulatory-extension" flag in the IFI Status container, but the "anticipated-expiration" date does not reflect the term extension.
Example:
<ifi-patent-status anticipated-expiration="20280207" regulatory-extension="yes">
European Patents are a special case since the status of the patent after grant is controlled at the national patent office level. For more information about the IFI Patent Status of EP records, consult New IFI Patent Status for EP.
Note: Detailed information about Inpadoc legal status data and coverage can be found at https://www.epo.org/searching-for-patents/helpful-resources/data/tables/weekly.html.