File Histories

How current are the file histories on Patdek?

Although we strive to maintain a mirrored relationship between the file histories available on Patdek and those same proceedings available from the USPTO PAIR system, we do not always succeed. Depending on crawl activity, Patdek could be up to 45 days behind the USPTO. For the majority of file histories involving issued patents, crawl activity is not a concern, because no new file history activities are likely. For file histories of patents involved in post-grant activities distinct from the PTAB, there will be a lag. There is also likely to be a lag for file histories of published patent applications.

What can I search?

Every document in the file history is searchable using Patdek. This is not likely the case with most services involving file histories. Some services even charge an additional per-page fee to OCR a retrieved file history.

When you say that every file history document is searchable, what do you mean?

Through our ingestion process, we know that the file histories available via PAIR are not text-searchable. A typical file history can span 200 to 1,000 pages or more. The PDFs made available from PAIR consist of scanned images only and desktop-based OCR will tie up the resources of your computer for some time chugging through those pages. For the Patdek service, PAIR documents are made text-searchable during ingestion. Most services do not utilize OCR during ingestion, and if they do, they are likely to charge you an additional fee.

How many file histories do you have in your collection?

We have retrieved a fair number of the available file histories from PAIR already. For those not yet retrieved, we attempt to retrieve the related file history using a background process. The goal is to retrieve a file history for you, if it's available on PAIR, so you don't have to do it yourself. For that reason, we don't maintain an exact count of file histories available.

What makes Patdek different from other websites that have file histories?

There are a number of services that make file histories available at some specified cost. We don't believe in selling government data to you. We sell you software that makes your job easier to perform. With that in mind, we are not a file history retrieval service that charges a fee based on each file history you desire. We provide file histories free of charge to the extent we can retrieve them from PAIR. If we can't get it from PAIR, you can retrieve it yourself and upload it to your Patdek account. We will then OCR it for you. You can then use our tools to analyze the file history like any other document on the Patdek system. We are researching a fixed-price service to retrieve non-PAIR-available file histories. This gives you an option to purchase the file history from us instead of another third party.