Understand the events groups in the Legal status

Modified on Fri, 29 Nov at 2:36 PM

Questel has created 27 event groups which regroup similar actions from the different patent offices:

Code	Definition of the code	Comment
ACL	Accelerated Prosecutions
ADM	Administrative notifications
APL	Applicant appeals and petitions
CCL	Classification amendments
COR	Corrections, amendments
CPA	Continued Prosecution Application (US only)	US only
DCS	Designated contracting states (WO and EP)	WO and EP
ENP	Entry into national phase, translations (AP, EA, EP, OA, WO)
EXM	Requests for examination, review procedures and review process, research reports	Need to combine with STATUS/ACT=PENDING P (event group)
INT	Examiner Interview (US only)	US Only

LAVL	For patents declared available for licensing or sale
LIC	License event (licensed or candidate patents)	General category for any event related to licensing
NLAV	Willingness to license withdrawn, revoked	Opposite of LAVL
NENP	Nonentry into national phase (WO and EP)	WO and EP
NIF	Not in force due to patent or application lapsed, expired, surrendered, withdrawn, abandoned, refusal, rejection, abandoned, etc.	Only for dead patents (LAPSED, REVOKED, EXPIRED)
NMC	Change of party name (applicant, assignee, inventor, opponent) or address
NOPP	No opposition filed	Only present if we get a specific event that the legal period for file 3rd party oppositions has passed.
OA	Official Office Action (final rejection, nonfinal rejection, Quayle Action, Vacate 2nd Off. Action (US only)	US only, customized for use by Orbit analysis
OAI	Applicant (incoming) initiated action or response to an office action or office communication (US only)	US only
OAO	Office action or office communication Outgoing (US only)	US only
OPP	Opposition, reexaminations, requested by 3rd parties	Does not include applicant appeals

PAY	Fee payment events	These events will be sorted in ACT based on effective date EFFD, not action date AD.
PIF	Patent in force	Combine with STATUS/ACT=GRANTED P (event code)
RAS	Reassignment, transfer of rights	Triggers breakout field REAS
RCE	Request for Continued Examination (US only)	US Only
RES	Restitution, restoration: in effect
SPC	Actions concerning complementary or supplementary certificates of protection, extension of protection period.

These Event groups are searchable in combination with the legal status described here or with other search criteria. To learn more about the syntax in the /ACT field, please refer to the article "Understand the events groups in the Legal status".

Warning: the AND operator will search inside the family, not only within one member. You can use the P operator instead to narrow down within an application legal status.

Example of search:

FR patents (national procedure or EP / PCT) having an extension on the term of protection (SPC)

EG/ACT=SPC P (PC/ACT=FR OR CC/ACT=FR)

The paragraph operator P is used to specify that the patents retrieved with an extension of term (SPC) are FR patents.

Patent offices or countries also form part of the ACT index. You have two possibilities to search for countries; either PC/ACT which is country of publication or CC/ACT which is a designated state on a PCT or EP application.

Please refer to the fields library within Orbit Intelligence (command line editor) to discover all the available fields.