IDS form filling is part of our OA Admin tool. From our OA Admin page for a patent application, you can access our tools to automatically fill IDS forms.
It is important that you verify the IDS form before filing it! There are many reasons that our IDS generation may not perform as expected:
- Our USPTO data sources sometimes provide bad data or are just not available.
- Our European Patent Office data sources may not have complete information.
- Typos in patent numbers (especially foreign numbers) may also cause incorrect data.
Note that we do not save any of the data that you enter. If you reload the page or leave and come back later, then you will need to start over again.
Adding References
We have two ways to add data to IDS forms.
1. Paste Patent Numbers
We bring up a dialog box where you can paste text of patent numbers in any format. We will extract anything from this text that looks like a patent number. We are able to extract U.S. patent numbers, PCT publication numbers, and foreign patent numbers. We will enter the numbers on the form in the same order.
We are not able to extract NPL references because the formatting varies widely. To add NPL references, we recommend that you download as PDF or Word and then add them yourself.
2. Import from Public Patent
You can enter any public US, PCT, or foreign patent number, and we will get references cited in that patent. You can optionally include references cited in the entire family. The references will include US patents, US publications, foreign patent publications, and NPL references.
We get this data from both the European patent office and the USPTO. Where both the USPTO and EPO return the same citation, we will remove duplicates. There are limitations to both sources:
- USPTO
- IDS forms in the File Wrapper -- The USPTO only provides citation data from some IDS forms. We are able to access citation data for IDS forms filed with the official USPTO SB08a form with revision 01-10 or later. If you use another PDF form or create a PDF from a Word document, then we may not be able to obtain the references. Currently, you need to be logged into Patent Center via Patent Bots to import from IDS forms, but we will be removing this limitation soon.
- Face of the Patent/Publication -- We don't currently get this data from the USPTO because there is no easy way to do it, but we are hopeful that the USPTO will provide this soon. The EPO does provide this information but it may not be available shortly after issuance/publication.
- EPO
- US patents -- Our understanding is that the EPO provides the citations listed on the face of publications and grants.
- Foreign patents -- We are not sure what citations are provided by the EPO so you will need to verify on your own.
The option to import from the entire family is only for EPO citation data. The USPTO does not provide an easy way to import citations from an entire family.
Generating Forms
After you are done entering references you can download SB08 form data. We support three different file formats:
1. USPTO SB08 PDF
This is the same PDF form provided by the USPTO. This form can only be opened in Acrobat and cannot be opened in other PDF readers. It is important to note that this PDF form has the following limitations:
- Maximum of 300 US patents, US publications, or foreign patents.
- Maximum of 50 NPL references.
If you exceed these limits, then the PDF form will only include the references up to these limits.
The advantage to using this form is that the USPTO data is less likely to have mistakes (such as OCR errors) and we can later retrieve this data.
2. Microsoft Word
We generate a Microsoft Word document that looks similar to the PDF form. This Word document does not have any limitations on the the number of references that can be included.
You will need to convert the Word document to PDF for filing. The USPTO may make mistakes when processing this form, such as bad OCR.
3. Microsoft Excel
We generate an Excel file that can you save for your own records. This file cannot be filed with the USPTO. If you would like to have references in a particular order on the SB08 form, you can sort the Excel file and then paste the numbers into our dialog box.
Previously Cited
We have another tab where we show you the previously cited references for your patent application. We have the same limitations here as described above for importing patents.
When adding citations to your IDS form, we will skip any citations that have already been cited.