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Patent families
Generally speaking, a patent family is a group of patents which, like a family, are all related to each other, in this case by way of the priority or priorities of a particular patent document.
In esp@cenet® a patent family is defined as comprising all documents having exactly the same priority or combination of priorities (simple family). However, deeper analysis of certain patent documents might lead to declare specific priorities as "non-active". That is, these specific priorities are ignored when building simple families.
An INPADOC patent family is defined as comprising all the documents sharing directly or indirectly (e.g. via a third document) at least one priority. This includes all the patent documents resulting from a patent application submitted as a first filing with a patent office and from the same patent application filed within the priority year with a patent office in any other country.
Simple patent family members are automatically assigned the ECLA symbol of the document classified first in ECLA.
For more information on patent families, click on the following link
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If you have any questions, please e-mail the INPADOC Helpdesk in Vienna on inpadoc@epo.org
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