Publication type data and filters

What is publication type?

Publication type tells you whether a patent is still an application or has already been granted. While there are other publication types, we focus on these two so you can quickly see in your search results whether a patent family has any granted members or not. We'll show a badge on each result that has at least one granted family members.

Why does publication type matter?

A patent that is not yet granted may become a threat in the future but is still under examination. That means the patent may never become granted or that the scope of the claims may be reduced by the time it is granted. When searching for freedom to operate (FTO) it is common to focus on live, granted patents.

How to filter results by publication type?

To exclude applications from your results, click on Publication type and change from All to Granted.

﹗Note: Publication type limitations are part of your Project Settings. That means it will always be applied when you click Update results even if FILTER RESULTS are set to OFF. 

How do we calculate publication type?

We start from the assumption that the patent is an application. If we detect an event that shows the patent has been granted, then we update the status to granted.

Our publication type event data is only available for AU, CA, DE, EP, ES, FR, GB, JP, and US. Your results will always include include both applications and grants from countries that we do not have publication type event data for. If you want to ignore those countries, you can exclude them from your results with the Patent offices filter.

Publication type status is a tool to save your search and review time. You can also tell if a patent is a grant by verifying the kind code, checking with the the publishing authority, and reviewing the file history.