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How to use WIPO CASE for your examination

As patent system and procedure vary among patent offices, you can choose any methodologies of using the WIPO CASE suitable for your examination.
Here is one generalized example for reference:

1. Enter the application/publication number of the application which you are examining, and click the button "Extended" or "Simple".
   1. Then, a patent family search is carried out, and "Time Line" shows patent family applications as a search result.

      

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      Expand title How to know if applications have search/examination reports You can briefly check whether each patent family application has search/examination reports by referring to the indicator .

      
      

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      Expand title How to find relevant applications for your examination If your application is at the stage of a national phase entry, PCT application is so relevant to your application that an ISR or IPRP would be quite useful. In addition, other applications at the stage of its national phase entry would also be relevant to your application. In the case of Paris Convention route, you see the information of priorities of your examining application and check other applications which have the same ones. They are usually relevant to your application, but you should compare a similarity of claims. Search/examination reports for applications with the closest claims will be more useful. You can briefly understand necessary information like priorities or PCT application, by looking at "Quick info popup" below:

      
      

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      Expand title How to do when a search result isn't returned You directly enter other office's application numbers to which your application claims the priority, or enter PCT application number related to yours.

      
      

2. Select one of the patent family applications you are interested in, and then you see "Document List".
   1. "Document List" helps you understand the prosecution history about the application.
3. Click each document to view its dossier contents, and you can obtain detailed information for your examination.

   1. As offices use their own document types, refer to ANNEX2 to know main documents of each office. 

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      Expand title Which documents should been seen Though all documents are valuable, outgoing documents, which are drafted by examiners, are especially important. This is because they show relevant prior arts and explain why applications should be granted or refused. Through the process of understanding examiners' thoughts and decisions, you can effectively utilize the search/examination reports.

      
      

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      Expand title How to read non English documents Refer to "Translations"

      
      

4. Once you understand search/examination reports of one office, you can also explore the search for other offices' reports and collect additional input to your examination.

   1. After collecting relevant reports, you will compare and analyze to see which information should be referred to. For the comparison, you select documents at "Document List" to forward to "Document Comparison View". On the view mode, you can choose documents you want to compare and show them side by side. 

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      Expand title Why cited documents sometimes differ among examiner Basically examiners have established their own examination method based on their experiences, infrastructure or else. All factors which surround examiners will cause the differences of search results and citations. On the other hand, there could be some reasons resulting in these situations. One reason is a difference of claims among applications. Applicants sometimes add some technical features to original claims before examination starts. You can investigate such difference through the process of comparison with claims of each office. Another reason is a difference of documents selected from the same patent family group. Examiners usually tend to cite documents written in their familiar languages, which means that there could be no substantive differences among citations. The WIPO CASE offers the useful utility by which users can search for patent family of citations. For more information, refer to "Citation Data section"

      
      

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      Expand title [How to read contents of citations The WIPO CASE supports the link to the PATENTSCOPE. You can see full documents by clicking the button  to open a window of the PATENTSCOPE.  For more information, refer to "Citation Data section"

      
      

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   When searching for patent family, you sometimes turn out that there are no search/examination reports due to a time lag of examination. Or, you sometimes have some other applications, which you want to keep tracking their results. For these cases, you can use "Notification" service to automatically receive a message of status change about designated applications.

   1. For more information, refer to "NotificationList"

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