Priority Date Field (PRIRD)

The priority date of a patent application can be searched using the PRIRD field code.  A patent's priority date can be as late as the filing date, or it can be many years prior to the patent's file date.  Patents receive earlier priority dates for many reasons.  For example:

  • There was an earlier provisional application filed.
  • It is a child application from a previously filed PCT application.
  • It is a continuation (or CIP) from a parent application.
  • It is a divisional of a parent application.

Searching priority dates within a range query is particularly useful when searching for prior art.

EXAMPLES

  • PRIRD:2005  -->  Finds documents with priority dates in 2005.
  • PRIRD:03/06/2001 --> Finds documents with a priority date on the specific date of March 6, 2001.
  • PRIRD:2001/03/06 --> The same as the previous search.  Finds documents with a priority date on the specific date of March 6, 2001.
  • PRIRD:[2000 to 2008] -->  Finds documents with priority dates any time from 2000 to 2008, inclusive of the end points.
  • PRIRD:[* to 08/16/2002] -->  Finds documents with priority dates anytime before 08/16/2002.

About Range Queries:

All date fields support Range Queries.  Range Queries let you search for patents that fall within specific date ranges.

When searching for priority dates you may be looking for prior art, so the wildcard asterisk ( * ) will come in handy.  For example:

PRIRD:[* to 08/16/2002] -->  Finds documents with priority dates anytime before 08/16/2002.

Use square brackets so the end points are inclusive.  Range Queries support curly brackets which exclude the endpoints, but they are generally not recommended since it is better to create inclusive queries.  This is because they read more naturally to most users.  For instance, the following two queries are the same:

PRIRD:[2010 to 2012]

PRIRD:{2009 to 2013}

Both of the above examples find documents with priority dates in 2010, 2011, and 2012.  However, the first example is more natural.

Now Chart It

Assume it is mid 2017 and I decided to run the following query with the options "Rep. Only" and "Family Dedupe" turned on in order to deduplicate the results:

(PRIRD:[* to NOW] AND ANO:Google)

Noticed I used the ANO query (Assignee Normalized Original), to make sure that Google is the applicant.  This is because about half of Google's current patent portfolio was acquired from other entities.  In other words, about half of Google's patent portfolio has an ANO from a company other than Google.  Also, notice that there are few, if any, patents with a priority date in 2016 and 2017.  This is because, since it's only mid 2017 in this example, the documents from those years are yet to be published.

Now Chart It

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