STNext users are now able to select the font, size, style, and highlighting color of hit terms for Standard, Enhanced, and Table (Excel) reports.
In the Reporting menu, clicking the Hit Highlighting Options link opens the Hit Highlighting Options window.
The window contains three tabs labeled Standard, Enhanced, and Table. Each tab controls the style options and selected values for the corresponding report formats. Note: There are no style options for XML reports.
When the user selects the desired style options for a report and clicks the Done button, the selected options on the active tab are saved as sticky preferences and used for future reports until changed. Each tab also contains a Reset to Default button that can be used to change the relevant tab selections back to system default values.
Patent Status Indicators (STI) for patents and utility models now appear in the Patent Status Patent Information (PSPI) table in MARPAT records.
Patent Status Indicators are calculated and provided by FIZ Karlsruhe based on over 4.1K legal status codes from INPADOCDB, as well as corresponding gazette data and/or calculated expiration dates. The calculated STI identifies whether a patent is ALIVE, DEAD, TRANSITIONAL, or INDETERMINATE:
ALIVE means that the application is still under active prosecution, or that the granted patent is in force.
DEAD means that the application is no longer being pursued, or that the rights granted to the IP holder are no longer in force, due to expiry, withdrawal by the IP rights holder, permanent cancellation due to non-payment of fees past any deadlines, etc. The DEAD Patent Status Indicator is assigned only when there is no chance that the patent is still ALIVE:
Patents which have no source INPADOC legal status data will be deemed ALIVE unless they have reached their calculated expiration date based on the application date.
Patents can exist with no status due to either difference in coverage by FIZ or the data has yet to be integrated to CAplus for recently ingested patents.
TRANSITIONAL refers to the period when the latest legal status event (such as a withdrawal or a lapse due to non-payment of fees) indicates that the patent may be on its way to becoming DEAD. If the patent is neither reinstated after a withdrawal, or the renewal fees not paid, then the patent will become DEAD six months after the initial legal event date. An event such as payment of renewal fees would return a TRANSITIONAL status to ALIVE.
INDETERMINATE is specific to EP grants. EP grants will be INDETERMINATE until the calculated expiration date. Because there can be a large volume of legal status events involving EP grants, some of which are reflected in or duplicated by the national offices and others which are not, it is difficult to provide a meaningful Patent Status for the EP grant as a whole. It may instead be worthwhile to check the national registers of countries of interest.
Supported display formats include ALL, MAX, BIB, FBIB, SBIB and STD (Indented formats as well such as IALL, IMAX, IBIB, ISTD, and SIBIB).
Building on the functionality released earlier this year, STNext reports now maintain the grouping of IT, RN, CN, and STR fields in hit results from USPATFULL/USPATOLD/USPAT2 files.
In report creation, when the user displays L-number(s) with the HITSTR command, selects the Standard/Enhanced/Table formats, and selects the Journal/Patent/Patent and Journal/Substance templates, the new Hit Structure > Index Terms with Structures field appears in the report/table and in the Included Fields column when customizing.