When adding a patent to an existing family one usually uses the extension or national phase workflow. 

These options are always available from the “parent” patent (3 dots menu), and the link with the parent patent is automatically created.

 

You can skip the workflow and manually add a patent - this allows to respond to all cases of adding a new patent to an existing family. 

This feature is useful for specific situations such as:

  • Adding multiple priority patents (e.g. several US Provisionals leading to a single invention filing)
  • Adding older patents which already exist but have not been registered in the system yet.

 

You can access this manual ‘add patent’ feature from 3 dots menu of the Family overview:



Fields description:

  • Patent Reference: The patent reference is most of the time is built on the following format: "Family Reference" - "Country Code" (+ digit, if several assets for the same country). 
    NB: A patent reference should be unique.
  • Patent title : The title of the patent can be independent of the family title. 
    The family title is by default suggested by the system (it can be modified by the user).
  • Type of the patent : Select the patent type among the following options: 
    • Priority
    • Provisional
    • PCT (ie WO applications)
    • PCT Extension (ie extension following the PCT phase)
    • Direct extension (ie extension following the 12 months priority delay)
    • EP Validation
    • EA Validation
    • Divisional
    • Provisional
    • Continuation-in-part (CIP)
    • SPC
    • Utility Model - Priority
    • Utility Model - Direct Extension
    • Utility Model - PCT
    • Utility Model - PCT Extension
  • Country of the patent : Selection of the protected jurisdiction (national or regional)
  • Status of the patent : It is possible to select two basic statuses:
    •  "Filing is in progress" if the project is in the process of filing and if the filing number and filing date are not yet available
    • "Protection is already filed". 
      NB: If you are adding older patents that were already Granted or Abandoned, you will be able to later on select these statuses.