Patent Workbench™ File History Viewing Features

Patent practitioners have told us that it takes a lot of time to prepare a file history in a way that makes it easy for them to review and analyze the file. The productivity tools inside the Patent Workbench™ Reader offer a number of different options to help attorneys review patent file histories in a fast and efficient manner. Today, we’ll show you some of the time saving features of the File History module within the Patent Workbench™ Reader.

You’ll be able to view detailed information about, and quickly navigate to, the application, office actions, responses, and more!

The “File History” module in the Patent Workbench™ Reader allows users to quickly scroll through the contents of the patent file history. Users can click on the included links to view the original PDF of the patent prosecution using the embedded PDF viewer. The left panel of the File History Module can be thought of as a table of contents for the prosecution history, with information about each paper being displayed on the right panel. The left panel displays a list of papers such as:

• Advisory Action
• Allowance
• Appeal Brief
• Decision
• Information Disclosure Statement
• Interview Summary
• Notice
• Notice of Appeal
• Office Action
• Patent
• Response

These papers can be arranged by date, by type, or by a user defined set.

The default view is “Papers by Date.” This view lists the papers in chronological order. The user can click on individual items in the list on the left panel to display information about that paper in the right panel

This is the interface in the left panel of the Patent Workbench™ Reader. Selecting a paper will display relevant information in the right panel.

Some users may prefer the “Papers by Type” view. This option organizes papers from the patent file history into types.

Papers by Type groups like papers for quick retrieval.

This option is useful for locating similar papers, such as Office Actions or Responses, so you can quickly gather information without hunting through the entire patent file history.

The third and final option for organizing the papers within the File History tab of the Patent Workbench™ Reader is “Select Papers.” This feature was added at the suggestion of one of our beta users and allows you to pick and choose which papers to focus on, so that the right- panel is not cluttered with extraneous information.

As you can see, we offer a number of viewing options, because we realize you might have different uses for Patent Workbench™ depending on your task. We think this on-the-fly paper reorganization will increase your efficiency!

The right panel of the File History module displays more detailed information about the papers within the file history. It is here that users can add a note about a particular paper, view previously added notes, select links to quickly access a particular spot in the PDF of the file history, and view the unique Patent Workbench™ Claims Summaries and Special Notes content.

The view section of the Patent Workbench™ Reader File History Tab. Notice the links to the relevant content and the "Add Note" button for quick user annotation.

Clicking on one of the links will open up the embedded PDF viewer and display the file in the place indicated by the link. This allows you to reference the original document quickly, easily, and in the spot of interest–no trying to figure out where you should be reading.

The “Add Notes” feature in the upper right corner of each document summary (as seen above) allows you and your colleagues to take notes for later use. These notes are fully searchable within the Patent Workbench™ Reader.

The Claims Summary is available for any document in which claims information was presented. The Claims Summary shows you which claims were changed, added, or removed at that particular juncture of the prosecution. It’s a nice feature that allows you to get information at-a-glance. Clicking on the “Claims” link in the document summary will open the file history, in the embedded PDF viewer, at the claims section of that document for quick reference.

Special Notes are valued added content created by Landon IP’s experienced IP Researchers, to make users aware of any discrepancies, missing information, or other circumstances of interest related to the file history.

The right panel displays more details about the individual papers within the file history including links to the original document, access to user notes and value added content such as the Claims Summary and Special Notes added by Patent Workbench™ staff.

That ends our wrap-up of the File History module within the Patent Workbench™ Reader. If you have questions or feedback, we’d love to hear them below!

Contact us today and let us show you how Patent Workbench™ can make you more productive. You can order a sample file or request a firm-wide demonstration of the product.