Related Application Data File Documentation (RLAP_05_15_DOC.TXT) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Technology Assessment and Forecast Database 7/7/2016 7:47PM Questions about the custom patent data extract files should be directed to: US Patent and Trademark Office Electronic Information Products Division Patent Technology Monitoring Team P.O. Box 1450 Alexandria, VA 22313 tel (571) 272-5600 e-mail: oeip@uspto.gov *** PLEASE NOTE THAT DATE FIELDS NOW ARE IN "YYYY-MM-DD" FORMAT *** ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ * \doc\RLAP_05_15_DOC.TXT - Detailed documentation for the RLAP_05_15.TXT RELATED APPLICATION data file ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ DOCUMENTATION FOR PATENT DATA, PATENTS GRANTED ON OR AFTER JANUARY 1, 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The construction of related application data records for patents granted before January 1, 2005, differs from the construction of the related application data records for patents granted on or after January 1, 2005. This file, RLAP_05_15_DOC.TXT, presents documentation for data records corresponding to utility, design, plant, and reissue patents and statutory invention registrations granted on or after January 1, 2005 to December 31, 2015. These data records are contained in the file, RLAP_05_15.TXT. NOTES ----- DATA RECORDS FOR PATENTS GRANTED ON OR AFTER JANUARY 1, 2005 ------------------------------------------------------------ The construction of related application data records for patents granted before January 1, 2005, differs from the construction of the related application data records for patents granted on or after January 1, 2005. Related application data records for patents granted on or after January 1, 2005, identify a parent document and a child document that have some connection to the issued patent. The relationship between the parent and child documents is described in other data fields within the record, particularly in the Parent Code field. To understand the construction of the related application data records for patents granted on or after January 1, 2005, it may be helpful for a user to compare the related application data records for a patent with the related application information contained on the corresponding printed patent. RELATED APPLICATION SEQUENCE NUMBER Equal to 0 ---------------------------------------------- The records with a RELATED APPLICATION SEQUENCE NUMBER equal to "0" do not contain information included in the related application section on the front page of the corresponding printed patent. These records contain information about the application number that resulted in the patent identified in the first field of the data record. Every patent included in the data file should have one related application data record with a RELATED APPLICATION SEQUENCE NUMBER equal to "0". In these data records, (a) the PARENT APPLICATION SERIAL NUMBER field contains the serial number of the application that became the patent identified in the first field of the data record and (b) the PARENT APPLICATION FILING DATE field contains the filing date of the application that became the patent identified in the first field of the data record (note that this field may be blank or out of range for a limited number of records). RELATED APPLICATION SEQUENCE NUMBER Equal to 1 or More ------------------------------------------------------ Please note that the 'related application' text section, as contained on the front page of the printed patent, is constructed from those data records having a RELATED APPLICATION SEQUENCE NUMBER equal to 1 or higher. ---------------------------------------- Data for some patents are not included in the data files because they were not present in the file from which the related application information was extracted. For more information, please see the documentation file named MISSING_RLAP_15.TXT, which resides elsewhere within the DOC directory. Although the patent numbers generally appear in sequence, some numbers are omitted because they do not correspond to issued patents. For more information, please see the documentation file named WITHDRAWN_75_15.TXT, which resides elsewhere within the DOC directory. A file "LASTPN_15.TXT" has been provided that displays the last patent number by year and patent document type. Also, please note that although the data have been cleaned up to some degree, the data file still contains some inconsistent data and may omit some data. -------------------------------------------------------- (1) File Name: RLAP_05_15.TXT Recording Mode: ASCII File Size: 473,037,629 bytes (about 473 MB) Record Count: 6,635,461 records Begin/Char End Char Field Data Position Position Length Type Description ---------- -------- ------ ------- ----------------------------------------- 1 7 7 char Patent Number 8 8 1 White Space 9 12 4 integer Related Application Seq. Nr. 13 13 1 White Space 14 16 3 integer Parent Code 17 17 1 White Space 18 39 22 char Parent Application Number 40 40 1 White Space 41 50 10 char Parent Application Filing Date (YYYY-MM-DD) 51 51 1 White Space 52 66 15 char Parent Status Code 67 67 1 White Space 68 74 7 char Parent Patent Number 75 75 1 White Space 76 78 3 char Parent Document Country Code 79 79 1 White Space 80 93 14 char Child Document Number 94 94 1 White Space 95 97 3 char Child Document Country Code The RELATED APPLICATION file is sorted by ascending patent number (primary) and related application sequence number (secondary) Each line is terminated with a carriage return and a line feed character (0D 0A in hexadecimal) after the last populated data field. Trailing blank spaces in each record may be removed to reduce the size of the file. --------------------------- DATA FIELD DEFINITIONS FOLLOW ==> Please see the file, "_README_RLAP_DOC_2015.TXT" for further information describing the data and file layout. ------------------------------------------------------------------- FOR ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTATION, PLEASE SEE THE "International Common Element (ICE) Red Book for Patent Grant Data/XML and Patent Application Data/XML" DOCUMENTATION ON THE USPTO WEB SITE (TO REACH THE WEB PAGE PROVIDING ACCESS TO THIS DOCUMENTATION, SELECT "Redbook Information" FROM THE USPTO WEB SITE "SITE INDEX" or enter "XML Resources" into the USPTO WEB SITE Search box. ------------------------------------------------------------------- PATENT NUMBER Field ------------------- This is a 7 position text field that corresponds to the number of the issued patent containing the data described in the other fields of the data record. RELATED APPLICATION SEQUENCE NUMBER Field ----------------------------------------- Multiple data records are often required to describe the relationship between a patent and its related documents. This is a 4 position numeric field that corresponds to the order of presentation of this information on the issued patent. The records with a RELATED APPLICATION SEQUENCE NUMBER equal to "0" do not contain information included in the related application narrative on the front page of the corresponding printed patent. These records contain additional information about the application number that resulted in the patent identified in the first field of the data record (most notably, the patent filing date). Every patent included in the data file should have one related application data record with a RELATED APPLICATION SEQUENCE NUMBER equal to "0". The 'related application' section, as contained on the front page of a patent, is constructed from those data records having a RELATED APPLICATION SEQUENCE NUMBER of 1 or higher. PARENT CODE Field (a required field for non-zero sequence number records) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a 3 position numeric field. Codes and their corresponding definitions follow. For Patents Granted On or After January 1, 2005 ----------------------------------------------- 71 Continuation (including streamline cont.) 72 Continuation-in-part 73 Substitute for 74 Division 60 Provisional application where the provisional application document number is listed in the "Application Serial Number" field. 61 Addition 62 Continuing reissue 63 Correction 64 Reexamination 65 US Divisional Reissue 66 US Reexamination-Reissue-Merger 78 Pre-grant publication where the publication document number is listed in the "Application Serial Number" field. 79 Reissue of patent document; the application number in the "Application Serial Number" field and the patent number in the "Parent Patent Number" field refer to the document which has been reissued. NOTE: Some parent codes that are not listed may appear in the file. The corresponding meaning of these non-listed codes, if any, has not yet been investigated and determined. PARENT APPLICATION NUMBER Field (CHANGED *) ------------------------------------------- This is a 22 position character field. For patents granted on or after January 1, 2005, this field corresponds to the serial number (or identifying number) of the application (or document) referred to in the Parent Code Field of the data record (see above). Most records are 8 positions (numeric) consisting of a six digit application number preceded by a numeric application series code (2 digits). This field alternatively may consist of a provisional patent application number of the form 6####### or a pre-grant patent publication number of the form YYYY#######. Series codes and corresponding filing dates (approximate) are as follows: Series Code Corresponding Filing Dates (approximate) 02 Before 1-Jan-1948 03 1-Jan-1948 to 31-Dec-1959 04 1-Jan-1960 to 31-Dec-1969 05 1-Jan-1970 to 31-Dec-1978 06 1-Jan-1979 to 31-Dec-1986 07 1-Jan-1987 to 31-Dec-1992 08 1-Jan-1993 to 30-Dec-1997 09 31-Dec-1997 to 05-Dec-2001 10 05-Dec-2001 to 01-Dec-2004 11 02-Dec-2004 to 11-Dec-2007 12 11-Dec-2007 to mid-2011 (overlap in 2010 and 2011 with series code 13) 13 17-Dec-2010 and later (overlap in 2010 and 2011 with series code 12) 14 16-Aug-2013 and later (overlap in 2013 and 2014 with series code 13) Note that as of October 1, 1992, design patent applications are provided with an application series code of "29". Prior to that date, design patent applications are assigned the same application series codes as other patent applications. * This field has been changed to a 22 position character field to accommodate pre-grant patent application numbers and PCT documents that now can be included in the field. PARENT APPLICATION FILING DATE Field ------------------------------------ This is a 10 position character field with the date format YYYY-MM-DD (e.g., 2000-10-31). The field corresponds to the application date of the document that is identified by the PARENT APPLICATION NUMBER in the data record. For some records, the date is missing or is incorrect (e.g., the date February 30 may be given). In such cases, attempts have been made to revise the date to a valid date close to the incorrectly noted date. In spite of these revisions, however, a limited number of invalid dates may remain in this data field. PARENT STATUS CODE Field (CHANGED *) -------------------------------------- This is a 15 position character field describing the status of the document identified by the PARENT APPLICATION NUMBER in the data record. Status is as of the date of issue of the patent identified in the first field of the data record. Codes and their corresponding definitions follow. Due to data inconsistencies, a very few records may have parent status codes that differ from those listed below. For Patents Granted On or After January 1, 2005 ----------------------------------------------- Code Description ---- ----------- ABANDONED Abandoned GRANTED Granted PENDING Pending * This field has been changed to a 15 position character field to accommodate additional data field values that are associated with patents granted on or after January 1, 2005. PARENT PATENT NUMBER Field -------------------------- This is a 7 position text field that corresponds to the patent number of the document identified in the PARENT APPLICATION NUMBER field, above. A patent number is only listed if it exists and is known as of the issue date of the patent identified in first field of the data record. PARENT DOCUMENT COUNTRY CODE Field (NEW *) ---------------------------------- This is a 3 position text field that corresponds to the country of the document identified in the PARENT APPLICATION NUMBER field in the data record (see above). Most parent documents originate from the U.S. and, in such cases, the country will be 'US'. Please refer to the ST_CNTRY_15.TXT file for the names of the countries corresponding to these codes. (this field is not used for patents granted prior to January 1, 2005) * This field was established to accommodate data that are associated with patents granted on or after January 1, 2005. CHILD DOCUMENT NUMBER FIELD (NEW *) --------------------------- This is a 14 position text field that displays the identifying document number of the child of the parent identified in the PARENT APPLICATION NUMBER field, above. In most cases, this field contains the application number of a U.S. application. Such U.S. application numbers usually consist of 8 digits, a six digit application number preceded by a two digit application series code. The series codes are as follows: Series Code Corresponding Filing Dates (approximate) 02 Before 1-Jan-1948 03 1-Jan-1948 to 31-Dec-1959 04 1-Jan-1960 to 31-Dec-1969 05 1-Jan-1970 to 31-Dec-1978 06 1-Jan-1979 to 31-Dec-1986 07 1-Jan-1987 to 31-Dec-1992 08 1-Jan-1993 to 30-Dec-1997 09 31-Dec-1997 to 05-Dec-2001 10 05-Dec-2001 to 01-Dec-2004 11 02-Dec-2004 to 11-Dec-2007 12 11-Dec-2007 to mid-2011 (overlap in 2010 and 2011 with series code 13) 13 17-Dec-2010 and later (overlap in 2010 and 2011 with series code 12) 14 16-Aug-2013 and later (overlap in 2013 and 2014 with series code 13) Note that as of October 1, 1992, design patent applications are provided with an application series code of "29". Prior to that date, design patent applications were assigned the same application series codes as other patent applications. (this field is not used for patents granted prior to January 1, 2005) * This field was established to accommodate data that are associated with patents granted on or after January 1, 2005. CHILD DOCUMENT COUNTRY CODE FIELD (NEW *) --------------------------------- This is a 3 position text field that corresponds to the country of the document identified in the CHILD DOCUMENT NUMBER Field in the data record (see above). Most parent documents originate from the U.S. and, in such cases, the country will be 'US'. Please refer to the ST_CNTRY_15.TXT file for the names of the countries corresponding to these codes. (not used for patents granted prior to January 1, 2005) * This field was established to accommodate data that are associated with patents granted on or after January 1, 2005.