Changelog

What's shipped.

Session by session, tagged by area.

2026-10-07

Confirm your email when you sign in with Microsoft

Account

●After signing in with Microsoft, the sign-in page now offers to confirm your email address with a code. It is optional.

2026-10-06

Watchlist emails for Microsoft sign-ins

Account

●If you sign in with Microsoft, the watchlist now lets you confirm your email address with a code, so watchlist updates can be emailed to you.

2026-10-05

Prosecution grid: an international preliminary examination report is one column

Prosecution

●Some of these reports arrive as separate pages: the cover, a sheet marking each claim against the criteria, and a sheet with the reasoning. Each page used to take its own column, and the cover's column said "No objections" beside its own pages' objections.
●The report is now one column with the objections from all its pages. Opening it shows each page as a tab, and its download package carries every page.
●A page whose text could not be read is named in the column, so a partly read report never looks complete.

Spreadsheet export: the Prosecution sheet lines up with the screen

ProsecutionUI

●Documents the grid does not show as examiner reports, such as an applicant's own annex or a grant decision, no longer take columns of their own in the Prosecution sheet. Its columns now match the grid's, and a report of several pages is one cell.

Prosecution grid: a PCT row no longer picks up a later international application's reports

Prosecution

●When a later international application claims priority from an earlier one, the earlier application's row could pick up the later one's preliminary examination report and replies. Each international application's documents are now fetched only for that application.

Documents Cited: a reference written with a dash before its number now links

Prosecution

●A cited document written like "US Pat. App. Pub. – 2006/0198541", with a dash between the words and the number, showed as plain text with no link. It now links to the document.

2026-10-04

The home page now names every office whose examination reports arrive automatically

Prosecution

●It listed eight, and said every other office needed a PDF upload. Brazil, Argentina, Canada and Finland are fetched automatically too, and are now named: AU, EP, US, PCT/WO, NZ, JP, KR, CN, CA, BR, AR and FI.

Uploaded examination reports are no longer labelled in US terms

ProsecutionStatusPerf

●When an uploaded PDF could not be split into its separate reports, the round was labelled "Office Action" whatever office it came from. An AU, EP, NZ, Finnish, Brazilian or Argentine report now reads "Examination report".
●Where the report states its own heading, that heading is used instead — so an EP communication keeps its own name. US reports keep the USPTO's own terms.

Family diagram: one provisional for each priority application

Family

●When one family member's record writes a priority application with a digit missing, the diagram and the table showed it as a second, separate provisional. They now show one, linked to every member that claims it.
●Two different applications filed on the same day with numbers one digit apart still show as two.

Documents cited: a document no longer carries another document's examiner number

Prosecution

●An examination report's own numbering decides its labels. A document the report cites only as supporting evidence no longer appears under the numbers ("D1", "D2", "D3") that the same report gives to other documents.
●The "Cited in" entry now shows the same label as the Label column, for example "D1" rather than "Comparative Document 1".
●The citation chips in the prosecution grid follow the same rule, so one document can no longer be hidden behind another document's number.

Prosecution grid: PCT demand filings named as the demand

Prosecution

●A Chapter II demand filed together with amended claims now appears on the PCT row as "PCT demand form", and its Arguments tab opens the applicant's reply to the written opinion rather than a one-page filing cover sheet.
●The applicant's own amended pages and letter, which the international preliminary examination report attaches as its annexes, no longer appear as a separate examiner report with objections. They stay on the row as the applicant's reply.

Prosecution grid: a report whose objections could not be extracted says so

Prosecution

●When the objections in an examination report could not be extracted, the grid used to show a single "Other" objection holding the whole report. It now says the objections could not be extracted and points to the source PDF, on desktop and phone, in the spreadsheet export and in watchlist report emails.

Family search: a busy patent office no longer turns a family into one member

FamilySearch

●When a patent office's data service briefly refused requests, a search could show a real family as a single member, and keep showing it that way for up to an hour. The search now reports that the family could not be loaded and offers Try again.

2026-10-02

Search: Brazilian and Japanese numbers typed as the office prints them

●A Brazilian application number typed the way INPI prints it, with its check digit (for example "BR 11 2023 001177 9" or "BR112023001177-9"), now finds its family. Before, only the number without the check digit worked.
●An older Brazilian number written without "BR", as INPI's documents print it (for example "PI0611496-2"), now finds the whole family rather than a single member.
●A Japanese era-year number with a separator, such as "JP H9-114783 A", now finds its family.
●A check digit that does not match the number is not dropped, so a mistyped number is reported as not found rather than matched to a different application.

Prosecution grid: Brazilian preliminary requirements show their objections

Prosecution

●A Brazilian preliminary requirement used to read "No objections raised", although INPI's report marks each cited document as destroying novelty or inventive step and requires a response. It now shows those Novelty and Inventive Step objections, each listing the documents INPI marked, in INPI's own words.
●Reports already in Scatter update the next time their family is opened.

Prosecution grid: a report nobody read never shows as having no objections

Prosecution

●A report Scatter holds but could not read now says "The document text could not be read" on every screen size, with a link to open the document. The desktop grid used to show "No objections" for it, including for several US office actions.
●A report that could not be retrieved now says so on a phone too, where it read "No objections raised".
●The spreadsheet export uses the same words, so it no longer lists "No objections" for a report that was never read.
●Reports stored before they could be read are read again the next time their family is opened, and then show their objections.

2026-10-01

Prosecution grid: objection names in US wording, if you prefer them

Prosecution

●You can now choose to see objection types in the words US practice uses: Anticipation for Novelty, Obviousness for Inventive step, Indefiniteness for Clarity, Written description for Support, Enablement for Sufficiency, Patent eligibility for Eligibility, and New matter for Added matter. Pick "US" under "Objection names" in the "…" menu at the foot of the sidebar.
●The choice is remembered in that browser and renames objections on screen for every office's reports; spreadsheet exports and emails keep the standard names. Everyone starts on the standard names, and nothing changes unless you choose otherwise.

Prosecution grid: earlier European replies gain the document they were missing

Prosecution

●European replies recorded before yesterday's change now also show a document that was filed with them but missing here, most often the amended description, the next time the family is opened. Nothing already shown is duplicated.
●Where a European reply includes a marked-up copy of the claims and one of the description, both now appear, each with its own tab. Before, only one of the two could be opened.

Terms & Privacy: both sources of cited-document PDFs are listed

ProsecutionStatus

●The data-sources list now also names the patent office download Scatter uses for some US cited documents, so every place a downloaded cited document can come from is listed.

Prosecution grid: one upload button for the whole family

ProsecutionFamilyPerf

●Uploading an examination report now starts from one button above the grid, "Upload examination report". Scatter reads the report and saves it to the application it names. If it names more than one application in the family, you choose which; if it names none, nothing is saved and you are told why.
●Each application's own upload button has been removed, so there is one way to upload. Uploading still needs you to be signed in, and an uploaded report stays private to your account.

2026-09-30

Prosecution grid: fuller applicant replies on European applications

Prosecution

●Some European applications were missing applicant replies. These now appear under the report they answer, with the office's own title for the filing.
●A pre-examination amendment can now show its amended description beside the amended claims, where one was filed.

2026-09-29

Family pages: an invitation to sign in

FamilyAccount

●Visitors who are not signed in now see a slim strip under the family header: signing in lets them get an email when the family changes, and upload examination reports, which stay private to their account. The cross closes it, and it stays closed in that browser. Browsing and searching still do not need an account.

Search: Australian applications that are filed but not yet published

●An Australian first filing can now be found by its application number before it is published. It shows on its own, with its title, applicant, filing date and status; the rest of its family appears once later filings claiming it are published. Previously the search said no family was found.

Prosecution grid: non-US objections no longer carry the US-only "Restriction / election" name

Prosecution

●Some objections in European, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and international reports were shown under the US-only name "Restriction / election". They now show what the objection itself says: lack of unity, clarity, or, where neither fits, "Other". US restriction requirements are unchanged.

Prosecution grid: US Ex Parte Quayle actions appear as rounds

Prosecution

●A US Ex Parte Quayle action now appears in the prosecution grid under its own name, with the applicant's reply beside it. Before, it was missed, and an application allowed after one could be described as allowed without any examination report.

Emails name the company behind Scatter

●Every email Scatter sends (sign-in links, watchlist updates, examination reports) now ends with the company's name, its ABN and how to contact it, in both the formatted and the plain-text version.

Terms & Privacy page brought up to date

Status

●The page now matches how Scatter works today: a document you upload while signed in is private to your account, every source of prosecution data is listed, the services that process uploaded documents and report browser errors are named, and questions go through the feedback form in the app.

2026-09-27

Status labels name one event

Status

●The status label on each family row now takes its words and its date from the same office event, chosen by what the event means, so a label no longer changes with the order an office sends its records in. For example, a European patent that survived the opposition period reads "NO OPPOSITION FILED WITHIN TIME LIMIT" beside that event's own date, a revoked one reads "PATENT REVOKED", and a Japanese patent names its registration certificate rather than the decision to grant.

Watchlist: the email box says when an address cannot receive email

●The email box on the watchlist page used to say "Updates by email are on" even for an account whose address has not been confirmed, which is never emailed. It now says the address is not confirmed, that nothing is being sent to it, and that changes are still recorded and shown on the page.

2026-09-26

Prosecution grid: replies in the Other column read in full

Prosecution

●Replies shown in the grid's "Other" column (those that could not be placed under a report) had their titles and dates cut off mid-word on a desktop screen. The column is now as wide as the report columns, so each reply's kind and date read in full.

Prosecution on a phone: a card that is still loading says so

ProsecutionPerf

●While a large family was loading on a phone, an application whose records had not yet arrived could read "No examination yet", even for a granted patent. It now reads "Loading…" until its records arrive.

Cited documents: an old Japanese publication no longer borrows a modern patent's title

Prosecution

●A Japanese publication cited with a short year (for example "JP 62-53099 A", from 1987) could be matched to a recent patent that happens to share its digits, so the Documents Cited row showed that patent's title instead (a 2017 chemical process on a loudspeaker family). The same happened to a Korean utility model matched to a patent application. Each citation's own details are now checked against the match: where the right document can be found it is shown ("ROTARY TYPE SPEAKER", 1987), and where it cannot, no title is shown rather than a wrong one.

Older US applications show their own application number

●Some US applications filed before 2011 were printed with a neighbouring application's number in the family table, the diagram, the page heading, the prosecution grid, IDS Assist and the spreadsheet export, and the external links to the application's file opened that other application. Each now shows and links to its own number, and uploading an examination report for one of them checks the report against that number.

2026-09-25

Older US applications show their own status, attorney and prosecution

ProsecutionStatus

●Some US members filed before 2011 were matched to a neighbouring US application with a similar number, so their status, attorney of record, patent term and examination reports could belong to a different application entirely (a vascular surgery patent was showing the examination history of a 2004 application for a near-field exposure mask). Each of these members is now checked against the application's own record first: status, attorney and term come from the right application, and examination reports are read from it from now on. Where two applications could both fit and nothing tells them apart, nothing is shown rather than a guess.

2026-09-24

Cited documents: a misread number no longer borrows an unrelated patent's title

Prosecution

●When a number on a scanned disclosure form had been misread (a "WO" read as "W0", for example), a best-guess match could attach the title of an unrelated patent to the row: a toy flying object and an antibody patent were showing on a carbonation-machine family. Those rows are now checked against Scatter's own reading of the citation and corrected to the document actually cited.

2026-09-15

Claims read in English for European patents

●The claims viewer was showing the German text for granted European patents even though an English version was sitting in the same record. It now prefers English wherever the office publishes one, and only labels the language when no English version exists.

An international application is named the same way everywhere

●A PCT member was shown as PCT/AU/2009/000943 in the family table and breadcrumb, but as WO2009000943 or AU2009000943 on the Documents Cited chips, in IDS Assist, in the prosecution exports, in the search suggestions and in the member details header. Every surface now prints the PCT application number, so one document cited by the international application reads the same wherever it appears.

A family opened by its publication number no longer reloads itself

FamilyPerf

●Opening a family through a publication number (the way search suggestions open it) used to rebuild the whole page a moment after it appeared, which re-read the prosecution data and closed anything opened in that first second, such as the Watch menu. The page now settles once.

2026-09-14

Search by a PCT application number

●A PCT application number typed the way it is printed (PCT/AU2009/000943), the way Scatter shows it (PCT/AU/2009/000943), or copied from a member's priority list (AU2009000943.W) now opens its family. Search suggestions offer the international application for it, and a family reached through its international publication now keeps a link that reopens the same family.

New Zealand members: a sealed patent reads as granted, and its file wrapper is found

FamilyStatus

●A New Zealand patent whose only publication is the application was showing a grey "Filed" pill beside its own "PATENT SEALED" wording. It now reads as granted, in the table, the diagram and the exports. On the families checked, this corrects fourteen New Zealand members and nothing else.
●A New Zealand application number was being shown, and looked up at IPONZ, with the filing year run onto the end of it (59068709 for application 590687), so the examination history for a sealed patent reported that the case could not be found. The number now displays as the office writes it and the file wrapper is retrieved.

Cited documents: a Brazilian check digit no longer splits one document into two

Prosecution

●A Brazilian publication cited with its check digit (BR112022013884-9) was shown as a separate document from the same publication cited without it, and its details could not be looked up. Both writings now appear as one row, with the title and applicant filled in.

2026-09-09

Cited documents: three more number shapes now open at Google Patents

Prosecution

●An older international application written with a two-digit year and a six-digit serial (WO 03/060451 A1), a US application publication cited without its type and with its leading zero dropped (US 2013150579), and a European publication cited with extra leading zeros (EP001107642A2) all linked to pages that did not exist. Each now opens the right record, and the two writings of one such document are shown as one row rather than two.

2026-09-08

Watch-list notifications for examination reports and responses are switched on

Prosecution

●A watched family set to report prosecution activity now has the office registers checked each morning. A new examination report arrives as its own email, with the document attached and what it contains; applicant responses and newly cited documents are listed in the daily digest. The watch-list settings no longer mark those notifications "not yet available", and the email settings line now says that a report travels as its own message rather than inside the digest.
●Nothing is sent when nothing has changed, and a family that is not set to track prosecution is unaffected.

A Finnish first filing now appears in its own family

Family

●Searching a Finnish application whose international application went through the Finnish receiving office returned the family's national and regional members without the Finnish application itself, so the number searched had no row and its Finnish examination reports could not be retrieved. The Finnish application is now included in its family, with the reports Scatter retrieves for it.

Cited documents: fewer duplicate rows and fewer dead links

Prosecution

●A citation that names the inventor after the number ("US20170113517 KWON et al. 27 April 2017") is now read as the publication it names, so it links to the right record, merges with the same document cited elsewhere in the family, and can be looked up for its title and applicant.
●A citation whose country code has been garbled into one that no patent office uses no longer offers a link that leads nowhere, and a US design patent cited without a stated type is recognised as a patent rather than filed as literature.

2026-09-07

Finnish examination reports are now retrieved

Prosecution

●Scatter now retrieves examination reports for Finnish patent applications directly from the Finnish Patent and Registration Office, with the search report issued alongside the first report attached to it. For an application filed in English the reports themselves are in English, with the office's opinion on patentability and its cited documents, so the round grid and Documents Cited fill in the same way they do for the other offices.
●Applicant replies are not yet retrieved for Finland; that is the next step for this office.

Cited US design patents now show their details

Prosecution

●When an examiner cited a US design patent in prose ("US Patent Number D645,875", "US Design Patent D645,875"), Documents Cited could list the same design twice, each row reading "Details not found in patent office records" beside a download that worked. Those writings now identify the design: the row shows its title, applicant and year, and two writings of one design merge into a single row.
●Already-stored citations of this kind pick up their details automatically over the following days rather than immediately.

2026-09-06

Applicant amendments retrieved only in part are no longer shown as complete

Prosecution

●A European application's pre-examination amendment was opening to claims 1 to 5 of a 15-claim amendment, with nothing to say the rest was missing. When a page of a filed document could not be retrieved, Scatter had been keeping the pages it did get and presenting them as the whole document; in a few cases it had kept an empty document. A filed document is now stored only when every page has been retrieved, and a document that could not be retrieved is left for the next visit to complete rather than shown short.
●The affected documents already on file have been completed: the reported amendment now opens to all 15 claims, and thirteen other partly retrieved or empty amendments, replies and letters across seven European applications are whole again.

2026-09-04

Family diagrams no longer sprout phantom "Provisional (inferred)" nodes

Family

●The format in which priority-claim data reaches Scatter changed upstream in recent weeks, and the family diagram had started drawing a dashed "Provisional (inferred)" node for members the family already contained — including the family's own PCT application, which lost its national phases to a phantom twin. One deep US continuation family was drawing eighteen such nodes where it has five real provisionals. Priority claims are matched on the application number again, whatever kind marker rides on them.
●The same change had quietly affected three other places, all repaired: the term date shown for a US application that claims a provisional or comes from a PCT (the provisional had begun starting the clock a year early, and the PCT had stopped counting); the IDS Assist inheritance rule, which had stopped recognising a continuation's parent; and the fallback route for retrieving PCT documents through a national phase's file.

A prosecution row no longer sticks on "Starting…" when signed in

Prosecution

●On a family whose examination reports are retrieved quickly, a row could sit on "Starting…" indefinitely while every other row settled, most often when signed in. Its stored reports were there the whole time; the row was showing a retrieval that had already been superseded. The row now shows its stored reports as soon as they load, and no longer starts a second retrieval before it knows whether it needs one.

2026-09-02

Upload sits where the next examination report would go

ProsecutionPerf

●On an application that already has reports, the Upload control now sits in the first empty round column of that row — the position the next report will occupy — instead of behind the small three-dot menu. Previously it was in plain sight only while an application had no reports at all, so the one moment you would want to add a subsequent report was the one moment the control was tucked away.
●Where every round column on a row is already filled, Upload appears at the foot of the most recent round instead, so it always reads as "after your latest report" wherever it lands. The three-dot menu keeps the re-fetch action.
●On a phone, the Upload control now follows the data rather than the office: an application whose reports were added by upload, at an office Scatter cannot retrieve from automatically, keeps its Upload control instead of losing it.

2026-08-31

Grant dates on the status pill now read the most recent grant-stage entry

Status

●Where an application carries several grant-stage register entries — an allowance, the grant itself, a restoration or reinstatement after a lapse — the date shown beside its status is now the latest of them, rather than whichever the register happened to list last. For a handful of European members this moves the displayed date to the later, formal entry.
●More importantly, whether a patent reads as in force or as terminated no longer depends on the order the register returned its entries in. This mattered most for a patent that lapsed and was later restored: the restoration is now always recognised as the later event. No family was displaying the wrong status because of this, but the answer was not guaranteed, and now it is.

2026-08-22

A second, free route to a cited document in English

Prosecution

●The English options on a cited document now include Google Patents' own published English text, offered above Scatter's machine translation and below the issuing office's own translation where one exists. It is free and immediate, so for most non-English documents there is now something to read in English without waiting for a translation to be generated.
●Each option still says whose translation it is. Google's is labelled as Google's and marked as not produced by the issuing office; the reading view keeps the description and the claims under their own headings, says so when the page carries only one of them, and links to the page it was read from so anything that matters can be checked at source.

2026-08-19

Canadian examination reports

Prosecution

●Examination reports for Canadian family members are now retrieved automatically. An Examiner's requisition is fetched, read, and its objections and cited documents extracted into the prosecution grid alongside the other offices — no upload needed. Coverage begins with applications from roughly the last decade; older Canadian files may still show the upload option.

2026-08-18

Download a prosecution round as a package

ProsecutionPerfData

●Open any examination report and choose "Download package": one zip carrying the report PDF together with the extracted data as a readable file — the objections with their claims, the verbatim passages, and every document cited with a link. Useful for records, for sharing a round with a colleague, or for handing to your own review tools.

2026-08-17

Search suggestions highlight your match; more cited documents resolve

ProsecutionSearchUI

●Suggestion results now highlight where your typed string overlaps each result's numbers, in whichever number carries it, so you can see at a glance whether a result matched the application number or the publication number.
●A cited document the register serves only under its bare number (without the kind letter) now resolves — the same reading the search box has always used.
●A cited document whose own record carries no title anywhere now borrows the title from another publication of its family, the same way the family page always has. The borrowed origin is recorded.

A cited document with no findable details says so

Prosecution

●Where a cited reference has no title to show — because the reference could not be identified, or the office's records hold no details for it — a small note now says "Details not found in patent office records" in the place the title would sit. With most rows now carrying their details, an unexplained gap read as an error; the note says what the gap actually means.

Design applications get their disclosure records back

●A granted US design application could show "record not available" in IDS Assist even though its file wrapper holds a full citation record. Design serial numbers were being misread as 1990s-era application numbers, so the look-up asked about the wrong file. Designs are now looked up under their own numbering first; the affected applications show their examiner citations and disclosure statements again.

A microfilm citation shows its publication number

Prosecution

●A Japanese utility-model microfilm citation used to render as its full descriptive sentence. The publication number it names now renders as the reference, linked, with the description preserved behind the merge.

Cited-document details now appear as you view, not overnight

Prosecution

●The look-ups that put a title and applicant under each cited reference used to run once a day. They now also run the moment a family's citations load with details missing, so the information fills in while you are on the page.
●Where a publication's own record carries no title at all, the title now comes from another publication of the same family already in the table, so the row reads as the document it is rather than a bare number.

Documents Cited shows one row per document

Prosecution

●Where the same document was cited in several ways across a family, it could appear as several separate rows. On one reported family, fourteen cited documents were rendering as twenty-three rows, with one utility model appearing four times under four different writings. Those now merge into a single row carrying every label and every citing application.
●Two causes are fixed. A document listed in a machine-translated report's reference annex was being filed as a different kind of record from the same document cited in an objection, so the two could never come together. And a document written without its country code (a Korean report citing a Chinese utility model as a bare number) is now matched against the same document cited with its country code elsewhere in the family.
●A country code is never assumed from the office that wrote the report. It is only taken from a document the family has already confirmed against the register, because two offices can issue the same number to entirely different documents.

An examiner's letterhead no longer appears as a cited document

Prosecution

●On one application, the Chinese examiner's own form footer had been captured as a cited document and listed three times. It carried a form number rather than a publication number, so nothing could be done with it. Text of that shape is now recognised as office stationery and left out. A document sitting beside an office's name is unaffected — only a string that is an office name followed by nothing but a form number is removed.
●A Japanese utility-model microfilm cited once with its publication number and once without now appears as a single row rather than two.

Documents cited only in a unity objection move to the search section

ProsecutionSearch

●A document an examiner mentions only while raising unity of invention is no longer listed among the documents cited against the claims. When the office's search report lists it, it now appears under "Identified in search" with its relevance category; otherwise it leaves the table, the same way a document cited only in a double-patenting objection already does.
●The search-relevance category is now kept for documents that are both search-listed and cited in an objection, so the search section reflects the office's own search record more completely as families are reopened.

An international publication cited with a bare "A" now links

Prosecution

●A cited international (PCT) publication written with a bare "A" after its number produced a link that went nowhere. It now opens the publication directly, and documents whose "A1"-style kinds already worked are unchanged.

The examination-report panel's tab strip loses its stray scrollbar

ProsecutionUI

●The tab strip along the top of the examination-report panel (and the response viewer) could paint a small system scrollbar over itself. The strip now sizes to its tabs, and when a report carries more objection types than fit, it scrolls with the same thin bar every other list uses.

2026-08-14

The cited documents table is half the height

ProsecutionFamily

●A cited document's title, applicant and year now sit on the same line as its reference instead of on a line of their own, so a table of twenty documents takes half the vertical space. Hover any row for the full text.

Documents cited by Japanese and Korean examiners now read as references

Prosecution

●Where a Japanese or Korean examiner names a document by its full class ("the description of CN Utility Model No. …"), the cited documents table now shows the document number itself, links to it, and lists it alongside the same document cited by other members of the family instead of as a separate entry.

Japanese examination reports now display when you open an objection

Prosecution

●Opening an objection from a Japanese examination report showed a blank page with the highlight bars floating on it. The report text now displays, with the highlights over the passages they belong to.
●Reports from every other office were unaffected and are unchanged.

2026-08-12

The Prosecution tab's loading indicator is back on the corner

ProsecutionPerf

●The small loading indicator and new-report count on the Prosecution tab return to their familiar spot on the tab's top corner. On phones they no longer sit over the tab label while data loads.

2026-08-11

The sign-in page recognises you when you are already signed in

Account

●Landing on the sign-in page while signed in now shows which account you are using, with a button to carry on where you were heading and another to sign out. It no longer opens with a sign-in form you do not need.
●Signing in as a different person is still one click away, and the page still shows the form whenever something has gone wrong and you need it.

2026-08-10

Extracted examination rounds could vanish from the prosecution page

Prosecution

●For a set of applications whose stored records date from an earlier numbering form, the prosecution grid showed no examination rounds at all — and their responses fell into the far-right "Other" column with nothing to pair against. The rounds were always safely stored; the page stopped finding them after a recent change. Fixed the same day it was reported, and all affected applications display again.

Cited documents now show what they are

Prosecution

●Documents Cited rows now carry the cited document's own title, applicant and publication year beneath the number, verified against the official register record. A document that could not be verified simply shows as before.
●A search box above the table narrows the list by number, label, title or applicant — useful on families citing dozens of documents.
●The same detail appears on IDS Assist rows, in citation-chip hover text on objection cards, and as columns in the spreadsheet export.

IDS Assist notes a family member already in the record

Family

●When a document flagged for review has a family member already in the application's own record, the row now says so, naming that publication. The row, its flag and the count are unchanged — a family member is a different publication with its own content, and whether to disclose remains the attorney's assessment.

IDS Assist corrections

●Foreign documents disclosed in some Information Disclosure Statements were not being read, so documents already disclosed could be flagged as needing review. They now read correctly and show as in the record.
●The English-access button now appears on IDS Assist rows on desktop, matching Documents Cited.

Smaller fixes

●Hovering a citation chip for an older extraction no longer pops up passage text in place of the document label.
●Pinning the same family under two different number forms no longer creates duplicate sidebar entries, and existing duplicates clean themselves up.

A cited document could be left out of Documents Cited

Prosecution

●Where the same international preliminary report reached us twice from different sources, a document cited in one of those copies could be missing from Documents Cited and from IDS Assist altogether, while the other documents cited in the same report appeared normally. It now shows alongside them.
●This was never specific to any one kind of citation: any document whose only mention sat in the duplicated copy was affected, whatever the examiner raised it under.

Documents an examiner found are no longer shown as applicant disclosures

●When an examiner's search identified a document and that same document also appeared in a US Information Disclosure Statement, it was filed under "Disclosed by the applicant" — understating that an office had cited it.
●Office-identified documents now show as such. This also restores the relevance flag on the collapsed search list, which previously could not fire for an affected document.

2026-08-09

Your uploads are now private

Perf

●Examination reports you upload are visible only to your signed-in account. Reports retrieved automatically from official registers stay shared for everyone, exactly as before.
●Uploading, correcting dates, and clearing stored data now require signing in, so every upload has an owner who can manage it.
●Documents you own are delivered through your session only; their download links no longer work for anyone else.
●Reports uploaded before accounts existed could not be attributed to anyone, so they have been removed. If one of them was yours, re-upload it in seconds and it becomes properly yours.

2026-08-08

The IDS review flag reads correctly on hover in dark mode

A11y

●Hovering the amber "Not in this record · review for IDS" flag in the IDS Assist table filled it with the light-mode highlight even in dark mode, leaving light amber text on a light amber background. Dark mode now uses its own hover tint, so the flag stays readable.

Cleaner references in Documents Cited

Prosecution

●A reference written with a trailing publication date and its label ("US 2020/0193425, Pub. Date: Jun. 18, 2020") rendered with the label left dangling after the date was removed. The label now goes with the date, the cleaned reference links through to its source, and a reference carrying an attribution ("… et al.") keeps its punctuation.

2026-08-07

The family diagram refits when the window changes size

Family

●Resizing the browser window, rotating a phone, or opening a side panel left the diagram showing the view fitted to the old size — on a phone that could mean an apparently empty canvas with the family tree sitting out of view. The diagram now refits itself whenever its canvas changes size, so the whole tree stays in view.

2026-08-06

EP validations now show

Status

●The Validations tab on a granted European patent reported no per-state records for every patent, whatever the patent. It was never reading the register correctly: the lookup was made with the publication's kind code attached, which matched nothing and returned an empty list rather than an error. Validations now list as intended — the states where the patent is in force and those where it has lapsed, each with its date.
●Where the register does record post-grant events but does not say which contracting state they belong to, the tab now says exactly that, rather than reporting nothing. The number of events held is shown, so an empty per-state breakdown is no longer mistakable for a patent with no national coverage.

US design numbers can be searched

●Searching a US registered design by its own publication number returned nothing, although the same family was reachable by searching its Australian member. The number was being reduced to a form the source rejects. Design numbers now resolve.
●Design rows still show as Filed: the source records no legal events for designs, so no later status can be derived from it yet.

A cited document's label no longer repeats its number

Prosecution

●In Documents Cited, US references frequently showed the publication number in the Label column as well as the Reference column beside it. US examiners cite by name and number rather than assigning the D1 / D2 labels European and Australian examiners use, so where an office assigned no label the column now reads as empty instead of restating the number. Labels genuinely assigned by an office are unchanged, including on rows where several offices cited the same document.

The sidebar's "more" menu opens where you can see it

●The menu at the foot of the sidebar opened behind the page: at full width only a sliver of it was visible, and with the sidebar collapsed to icons it could not be seen at all. It now opens in front. With the sidebar collapsed this menu is the only route to Report a bug and Feedback, so both were unreachable in that state.

2026-08-05

Prosecution export now states each application's status

ProsecutionStatus

●The prosecution spreadsheet set out each application's examination history without saying where the application itself stood. Both application sheets now carry a Status and Status Date column, colour-coded and worded exactly as the status shown on screen.
●Where a status date carried no real meaning — an international application that simply passed the national-phase window, whose only available date is its filing date — the column is left blank rather than printing a date that reads like an expiry. The family members sheet used to print it; it no longer does.

US applications from 2016 to 2018 can be found by their own number again

●Searching a US application in the 15/ series returned nothing, whichever way the number was typed. The affected applications were always in the database and appeared normally in a family — they simply could not be reached by searching their own application number. Every US series now resolves.
●Pasting a number in the form Scatter itself displays it, office code and all, now searches the same way as typing the bare number.

2026-08-04

Signing in when you are already signed in

Account

●Opening the sign-in page while a session is already live now says whose it is, and offers to sign out. Previously the page offered every sign-in method regardless, which made it possible to attach a second sign-in method to the account you happened to be signed in as, rather than to the one it belongs to. Signing in with a second method now requires signing out first, so the method always attaches to the right account.

Sign-in messages that say what happened

Account

●When a sign-in does not complete, the page now explains the specific reason and what to do about it. In particular, trying a new sign-in method for an address that already has an account used to report only that sign-in could not be completed, which read as a fault with the account itself; it now says an account already exists for that address and points to the method that works for it.

2026-08-03

Read a cited document in English

Prosecution

●Cited documents that are not in English now carry a language control in the Documents Cited table. It lists where English can come from, and says so plainly for each choice: the issuing office's own English translation where one exists (Japanese and Korean documents), or a machine translation generated in Scatter, labelled with the model and date and marked unreviewed. Documents already in English show no control. Office translations open as the office's PDF; machine translations open in a reader with the provenance stated above the text, and either is prepared once and kept.

2026-07-31

Watchlist digests no longer drop changes on very active families

●When a single check on a watched family turned up a large number of changes, the digest summarised them as a count and the individual changes were not kept. Every detected change is now recorded and reaches you across your digests, with each email listing a manageable number and pointing to the family for the rest.

Older Japanese cited documents now link through

Prosecution

●In the Documents Cited table, a Japanese document written in the traditional era-year form (for example Heisei or Showa year notation) showed as plain text while its US and European neighbours were clickable links. Those documents now link through to the full publication like the others.

Singapore application numbers now resolve

●Searching a Singapore application number as it is printed on IPOS documents (for example SG11201811762R) returned no results. The trailing check letter was being treated as a publication kind code and stripped, which turned every modern Singapore number into one the patent office does not recognise. Singapore numbers now resolve, and the family opens as it should.

Documents cited by a filtered-out family member are no longer missed

ProsecutionFamily

●On the Prosecution page, IDS Assist compares documents cited across a patent family against the record for each US application. Applying the office or status filter narrowed that comparison to the applications still on screen, so a document cited only against a hidden member could be reported as already in the record. The comparison now always covers the whole family; the filter continues to control only what is displayed.

Cross-checking is limited to earlier US applications

●IDS Assist sets aside a document that already appears in the record of an earlier application in the same US chain. It was also setting aside documents on the strength of a foreign counterpart or an international application, which do not carry a document into a US file. Those documents are now listed for review.

The watchlist says which changes it checks for

●Examination reports, applicant responses and newly cited documents can be selected on a watch, but are not yet checked. They now carry a "not yet available" marker, and the preset descriptions say the same, so an absence of email is not mistaken for an absence of change. Selections are saved and take effect when checking is switched on.

2026-07-31

A reply now sits under the report it answers, not in "Other"

●Where an office issued a short procedural note after a substantive examination report, a reply filed in response to that report was pairing to the note instead, and so appeared detached in the far-right "Other" column. Replies in that situation now sit under the report they answer.
●A reply that genuinely cannot be placed still appears in "Other" — nothing is dropped from the grid.

2026-07-29

Uploading examination reports now requires signing in

ProsecutionPerfAccount

●Uploading a document places it in the shared record, so it is now an action tied to an account: the upload control asks you to sign in first, and brings you straight back to the family you were on. Browsing, searching and reading everything remains open without an account.
●Signing in is a one-step email link - no password to create.

A concluded application no longer reads as "awaiting reply"

●On the prosecution list, an application whose status is granted, accepted, lapsed, revoked or expired was still summarised as "awaiting reply" whenever our record held no applicant reply after the last examiner report. That contradicted the status shown beside it. Those applications now show the date of the last action on the record instead. Applications genuinely still under examination are unchanged.

Clearer loading and clearer warnings on the prosecution grid

ProsecutionPerf

●When a jurisdiction's file is being retrieved, each cell now stays in its loading state until everything for that cell is ready, then appears all at once. Previously the examiner's reports showed first and the applicant's replies popped in underneath a moment later.
●If part of a file could not be retrieved on a load, that now shows as a prominent amber warning, both at the top of the tab and on the affected application's own row, so a missing half of a file is never mistaken for "nothing was filed". The grid retries automatically on the next visit.

Brazilian and Argentine examination reports now load automatically

ProsecutionPerf

●Applications at INPI Brazil and INPI Argentina now retrieve their examination reports the same way US, European, Australian, New Zealand and Asian members already do. Nothing to switch on: open a family and the Brazilian and Argentine rows fill in alongside the rest.
●Objections are read in Portuguese and Spanish and shown under the same universal headings as every other jurisdiction, so you can scan novelty, inventive step, clarity, sufficiency and unity across a whole family without changing vocabulary.
●Each report keeps the office's own document title, so a Brazilian round reads "Exigencia de pre-exame (6.20)" or "Deferimento (9.1)" rather than a translated approximation.
●Both offices serve searchable text rather than scans, so the reports are readable and quotable immediately.
●Where an office has published dispatches but no examination report yet, or where the Argentine file exists only as a digitised paper record, the empty state now says which of those it is instead of implying examination has not begun.

2026-07-28

A calmer sidebar corner

●The bottom of the sidebar is now three lines instead of six: who you are signed in as, Report a bug, and Feedback. The site links, keyboard shortcuts and the sign-out actions moved into a small menu beside your email.
●Report a bug and Feedback stay on the surface at every width. They are what you reach for when something has just gone wrong, so they are never behind a menu.
●On a phone, opening a details panel used to leave the slide-out menu showing a bare icon strip with no pinned families and no recent searches. It now always opens in full.

2026-07-28

The menu closes properly on a phone

●On a phone, the close button in the slide-out menu sat underneath the light and dark toggle, so tapping near it switched the theme instead of closing the menu. The two controls are now separated.

2026-07-27

A cited web page is no longer confused with another of the same name

Prosecution

●Two different web pages that share a title are now kept apart. Previously they could be treated as one document, which meant a document that had not been disclosed on a US application could appear as though it already had.
●Grant-stage office documents (certificates of grant, decisions and intentions to grant, summonses to oral proceedings) no longer appear in the cited-documents lists. They record what an office did; they are not documents cited against a claim.

Watch a family and hear what changed

Family

●You can now watch any family from its page and Scatter will check the public record and tell you what changed. Choose how often it looks (daily, weekly, monthly, or paused) and what it reports: status movement, new family members, new legal events, new examination reports, applicant responses, or new cited documents.
●Updates arrive as a short email that says what changed and links straight into Scatter, where each change is shown with what it was derived from. The email is a notification, not a report, so nothing important sits only in your inbox.
●Every change carries its basis. Anything read from a lagging status feed says so and asks you to confirm against the register, and a family Scatter has not been able to reach is shown as a gap rather than as "nothing changed".
●One message covers every family that is due, and nothing is sent when nothing changed.
●Watching is per account, so it follows you between devices. Pinning is unchanged and still works with no account; your watchlist page offers to add any pinned families that are not on it yet.
●Scatter does not track your dates. This reports what has already happened on the public record, and that statement sits on the watchlist itself.

2026-07-26

Sign-in is live

Account

●Optional accounts are now available on the live site. Browsing and searching stay open to everyone and nothing requires an account.

A clearer sign-in email

Account

●The sign-in email now shows the address the link was requested for, states that the link works once and expires in 15 minutes, and prints the web address in full so you can check where it goes. Firm mail systems often rewrite links, which makes hovering over a button unhelpful.
●It also explains why the link opens a page with a confirm button: mail security systems open links automatically, and the extra step stops one of them using up your single-use link before you do.

Better recovery when a sign-in link does not work

Account

●An expired or already-used link now returns you to the sign-in page with an explanation and a fresh start, instead of a bare error page.
●The "check your email" screen now tells you when the link expires, suggests the junk folder, and offers to send another one without retyping your address.

A tidier sidebar, and a proper share card

●The theme control is now a small icon beside the collapse control, rather than sitting among the account actions.
●Links shared to Slack, Teams or LinkedIn now show the full Scatter mark and the product line beneath it.

Sign out on all devices

●Signed-in users can now end every session at once from the sidebar, not just the one in the current browser. Useful if you signed in on a personal phone or a machine you no longer use.
●Sessions now also expire after a fortnight of not being used.

2026-07-25

Optional sign-in with email links

Account

●Scatter now offers optional accounts. Browsing and searching stay open to everyone, exactly as before; nothing requires an account. Signing in takes one step: enter your email on the sign-in page (or via the new button at the bottom of the sidebar) and click the link we send you. No password to create or remember.
●The emailed link opens a confirmation page and returns you to the exact family view you were on when you asked to sign in.
●Accounts are the foundation for what is rolling out next: uploads tied to your account and kept private to you, and pinned families that follow you across devices.
●The Terms and privacy page has been rewritten to describe accounts and what is stored (your email address and a session record).

Documents cited merges quoted and unquoted renderings of the same article

Prosecution

●The same non-patent document (a journal article, a conference paper, a web page) cited once with its title in quotation marks and once without could appear as two rows in the Documents Cited table. The unquoted renderings now merge with their quoted twins, including author-then-title forms, entries differing only in a retrieval note or date tail, and entries carrying an examiner's "see entire document" annotation. Distinct documents with similar openings (for example two different dictionary definitions) remain separate rows.

2026-07-23

Search now handles a pasted number with brackets, quotes or hidden characters

●Pasting a patent number that dragged in surrounding punctuation (brackets, quotation marks, extra spaces) or invisible formatting characters now resolves the same as typing the number plainly, in both the search box and the type-ahead suggestions.

An examination report we could not read is no longer shown as raising no objections

Prosecution

●When a report's text could not be read (an older image-only document), its cell in the prosecution grid could mistakenly show "No objections raised" — even for a rejection. It now says plainly that the document text could not be read, with a prompt to open the source PDF and review it directly. Genuinely objection-free reports are unaffected. Newly retrieved reports also try harder to read the underlying document before storing it.

Documents cited merges more citation-format variants of the same document

Prosecution

●The same document cited in different written styles (for example "USP 4,786,360" alongside "US-4,786,360A", "US Patent 6997497" alongside "US6997497B2", longhand "United States Patent App. Pub. No." forms, doubled prefixes, kind-code-first European forms, and a common scanning misread of the trailing kind code) could appear as two rows in the Documents Cited table. These variants now merge into one row, on both newly retrieved and already-stored records.

Reference column no longer shows passage text in place of a document number

●Where an international search report identified a document by its label with only the relevant passages quoted (for example "see paragraphs [0045]-[0050]"), the Documents Cited reference column could show that passage text as if it were the document's number. The document now resolves to its real number where the report identifies it, and otherwise shows its label.

2026-07-21

Documents cited no longer lists a document's positional label as a separate reference

Prosecution

●Where an examiner referred to a document by its positional label (for example "D1") as well as its full number, the Documents Cited table could show the bare label as its own extra "reference" row. Those entries now resolve to the document they name and merge into its row, so the table lists each document once, under its real number.

2026-07-20

International-phase reports no longer appear twice

●The same international-phase report (for example an international preliminary report on patentability) could occasionally show as two rounds with different dates on a PCT application, with the older copy placed in the later round. It now appears once, under its correct date.

2026-07-18

IDS Assist considers more of the cited-document record

Prosecution

●Documents recorded in older or unusual citation formats (older European and Japanese numbering styles, longhand US publication references) were previously left out when IDS Assist compared a US application against documents cited across the family. They are now included, so the review list is more complete.

2026-07-17

More reliable European prosecution retrieval

ProsecutionPerf

●European (EP) examination documents and applicant responses that could previously fail to load now retrieve reliably.

2026-07-16

Cited-document references display correctly

Prosecution

●Some cited-document numbers drawn from a US application's own list of disclosed documents occasionally displayed with a doubled country code (like "USUS…") or a few stray characters. Those references now show in their correct form.

2026-07-15

Report a bug

●A new "Report a bug" option in the sidebar lets you flag a problem in one click. It attaches a snapshot of your session — the page you were on, your browser, and, when you're viewing a patent family, how your view compares to a fresh lookup — so issues that are hard to reproduce can be pinned down without a back-and-forth. You can add an optional note. No personal data is collected.

The prosecution page, rebuilt for a phone

Prosecution

●The round-by-round view no longer asks you to scroll sideways *and* down through a wide grid on a phone. Each application is now a card you can scan down the screen — office, number, status, and a one-line summary ("3 rounds · last action May 2025") — and you tap any card to open that application's examination timeline in place. The whole family's prosecution reads as a single vertical scroll.
●The Documents Cited and IDS Assist lists are now a clean card per document — reference, where it was cited, and its status — instead of a cramped table that squeezed long entries and pushed columns off the screen.
●The desktop view is unchanged.

Scatter reads and looks better on a phone

●A round of mobile polish across the app. The landing-page preview now shows its full view switcher instead of clipping the last tab, and the home-page "new" badge no longer collides with the menu button.
●On a phone, a member's application number is always fully visible next to its status, even when the status text is long. Search and other text boxes no longer make the page jump-zoom when you tap into them.
●The family diagram now fits every member on screen for large families instead of cutting the widest ones off at the edges.
●Inside an examination report or an applicant response, the row of tabs now scrolls when there are more than fit across a narrow screen, so no tab is ever unreachable.
●Buttons, menus, and the slide-out navigation drawer have larger, more comfortable tap targets on touch screens.

Quicker ways in

●The three preview cards on your home page — Family table, Relationship diagram, Prosecution extraction — are now clickable and open a live example so you can see each view in one tap.
●The sidebar footer now links to About and the Changelog, so those pages are reachable from inside the app, not just the front page.

A calmer screen when a number doesn't resolve

●When a patent number doesn't match any family, you now get a neutral "no family found" screen with a search box and a few examples, instead of a red error and a "Try again" button that just repeated the same failed lookup. Genuine connection and server problems still show the retry.

2026-07-14

More examination reports now surface the examiner's other cited documents

Prosecution

●For applications in more offices — Australia, Japan, Korea, China, New Zealand, and European examination communications — Scatter now lists the documents an examiner cited or listed in a report but did not raise against a claim. They appear in the Documents Cited summary under "identified in search", alongside the documents raised in objections. This applies to reports retrieved from now on.

Expired and soon-to-expire terms now flagged in the family table

FamilyStatus

●The Term column now carries a small badge: a red "Expired" pill when the term has already ended, and an amber "Expiring" pill when it ends within six months — so at-risk members pop out at a glance when scanning a family.

Searching a US publication number as printed now works

●Searching for a US publication number exactly as it appears on the patent (for example US 2018/0263047) now finds the family, even when the printed number carries a leading zero that some data sources drop. That form previously returned no results.

2026-07-13

More US applications now show their cited-document record

Prosecution

●IDS Assist and the US application details now retrieve the examiner and search record for more US applications. Some US applications previously showed "record not retrieved" even though a record existed; those cases should now populate.

Scatter's icon now appears in Google results and iOS bookmarks

●Scatter's brand mark now shows next to the site in Google search results, instead of a generic globe. Saving the site to an iPhone home screen or bookmarks now uses the Scatter icon too.

Download a prosecution round's documents as a zip

ProsecutionPerfData

●Each prosecution round now has a button to download all of that round's documents together in one zip file — the examination report plus the applicant's response documents paired to it. It appears on rounds that have more than one document; a round with just the report keeps its existing single-download link.

Cleaner prosecution response previews and objection details

Prosecution

●Response previews in the prosecution view now start at the applicant's argument, rather than any document-header or filename text that preceded it — so the preview shows the substance at a glance.
●Objections that concern an amendment or the wording of a claim (added matter, clarity, support, sufficiency) no longer show document citations that don't belong to them — those objections are not about earlier documents.
●The "with prosecution data" count in the family summary now reflects only members that actually have retrieved prosecution history, not every member the tool looked at.
●These improvements apply to families already in the system.

2026-07-09

Consistent document labels across the prosecution view

Prosecution

●Examiner document labels now read in one consistent "D" form (D1, D2, D3…) throughout the objection cards and the "Documents cited" list. Reports from some offices — especially machine-translated ones — refer to the same document under mixed styles ("1", "Document 1", "Comparative Document 1"); these are now recognised as the same label and shown once, so an objection that relied on three documents shows three citations, not five. Where different offices numbered the same document differently, each office's number is still shown (for example "D2 / D3"). Applies to families already in the system, with no need to re-fetch.

Fewer duplicate and phantom entries in cited documents and IDS review

Prosecution

●The same document listed once as its original number and again as a machine translation (for example a Chinese document and its "English Machine Translation") now shows as a single entry in the "Documents cited" list. Separately, the US IDS-review helper no longer lists a document that was never resolved to a proper number (a bare label like "Comparative Document 4") as something to review — those unidentifiable entries are almost always the same document already on record under its real number. Applies to families already in the system, with no need to re-fetch.

2026-07-06

Added matter is now its own objection category

Prosecution

●Objections that an amendment adds content beyond the application as originally filed (a very common ground in European examination, with equivalents in Australia and the US) now display as their own "Added matter" category in the prosecution grid. Previously these could surface under unrelated categories. Applies to newly retrieved examination reports.

2026-07-03

A clearer flag when a long examination report was only partly read

Prosecution

●Occasionally a very long examination report can't be read in full in a single pass, and part of it is missed on that load. When that happens, the prosecution timeline now shows a short amber note on the application so you know the extracted objections for that report may be incomplete, rather than the partial result looking like the complete one. The objections that were read are still shown as usual.

2026-07-01

Chinese applications now show the applicant's amended claims, with English on demand

●For Chinese applications, the prosecution timeline now shows the applicant's amended claims and description pages, paired to the examiner's report each one answered (and any amendments filed before examination). Because these are filed in Chinese, each document has a "Translate to English" button. One thing to note, flagged in the view itself: the applicant's written arguments are not available for Chinese applications, so only the amended pages are shown (unlike Japanese and Korean applications, which include the arguments). Very old Chinese applications may not have downloadable pages.

Japanese and Korean applications now show the applicant's replies

●For Japanese and Korean applications, the prosecution timeline now shows the applicant's replies to the examiner — their arguments and any amendments — alongside the examiner's reports, paired to the report each one answered. Voluntary amendments filed before examination are shown too. Where the office provides an English version of a reply, that is what you see.

PCT prosecution documents now shown in English where available

Prosecution

●When an international (PCT) application's written opinion or international preliminary report on patentability was issued in another language (for example, for an application filed in Japan, Korea, or China), the prosecution timeline now shows the official English translation of that document directly, instead of the original-language version. The round keeps its correct date, and the objections are read straight from the English text — so there's nothing to translate by hand. Documents that were already in English are unaffected.

More PCT Chapter II reports now appear in the prosecution timeline

Prosecution

●The international preliminary report on patentability (Chapter II) is now retrieved for more PCT applications. Some of these reports were previously missing from the timeline; they now appear alongside the written opinion, with their objections and cited documents.

More reliable retrieval of foreign and PCT examination reports

ProsecutionPerf

●When a family's prosecution data is loading and a records source has a brief hiccup, retrieval now retries automatically instead of showing "no reports found" for a member that actually has them. This reduces the cases where a report was temporarily missing and only appeared after a reload.

Clearer message when a foreign application's examination documents aren't yet retrievable

Prosecution

●For Japanese, Korean, and Chinese applications where the office has documents on file but hasn't yet organised them for automated retrieval, the prosecution view now says exactly that — and points you to view them directly or upload the report — instead of implying examination may not have begun. The old wording was misleading for applications that are already granted.

2026-06-26

Status shows while prosecution data is still loading

ProsecutionStatusPerf

●While a family's prosecution data is loading, each application being read shows a small spinner next to its status — signalling the status is provisional until loading finishes. The spinner appears in both the table and the diagram, sits beside the status so it stays readable, and clears automatically when loading completes.

2026-06-22

Chinese examination reports now appear for more applications

Prosecution

●More Chinese family members now show their examination reports in the prosecution timeline. Previously some Chinese applications showed no examination history even when reports were on file.

2026-06-21

Fuller PCT / international prosecution

Prosecution

●International (PCT) applications now retrieve their international examination documents directly — the written opinion of the International Searching Authority and the international preliminary report on patentability — and show them in the prosecution timeline. This populates the PCT view for more applications, and across more receiving offices, than before.

Search results now show the number you typed

●Typing a grant number to find an application (for example, entering a granted US patent number) now shows that number in the search result alongside the application, so it is clear the right record came back. Previously the result could display different numbers that didn't include the digits you typed.

Examination date reflects the report, not an unrelated event

Prosecution

●The date shown on the "Under examination" status badge now matches the latest retrieved examination report's mailing date. Previously it could show a later unrelated event date from the legal history (for example, an address-change entry), making the date inconsistent with the report label beside it.

JP/KR/CN: allowance notices no longer appear as examination reports

Prosecution

●Notices of allowance and grant decisions in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese applications are now filtered from the prosecution timeline. Previously a family that had reached the grant stage could show its allowance notice as a final "examination report" in the grid.

Japanese, Korean & Chinese examination reports

Prosecution

●Examination reports for Japanese, Korean, and Chinese family members are now retrieved automatically and shown in the prosecution timeline alongside the other jurisdictions. Non-English reports can be translated to English in place, the same as elsewhere.

Fuller European examination history

Prosecution

●For European applications, the prosecution view now captures the applicant's reply to a summons to oral proceedings (the written submissions and amended-claim/auxiliary-request sets filed in the run-up to a hearing), so the examiner's report no longer appears with nothing beneath it.
●It also now shows a refusal by the examining division, with its reasons, as its own step in the timeline.

2026-06-20

Keyboard access to objections

Prosecution

●Objection cards can now be reached and opened with the keyboard (Tab to a card, then Enter or Space). Opening an objection moves focus into the panel, and closing it returns focus to the card you came from, so the prosecution grid is navigable without a mouse.

Keyboard access to the member details panel

FamilyUI

●Opening a family member's details panel now moves focus into the panel, and closing it returns focus to the row you opened it from, so the details panel is reachable and dismissable without a mouse (matching the prosecution objection panel).

Clearer wait message when first opening an objection highlight

ProsecutionUI

●The first time you open an objection's highlight in a given report, preparing the document can take a few seconds. The wait message now reflects that ("Building document index…") instead of a generic "Locating passage…", so the brief pause reads as expected rather than stuck. Subsequent opens stay instant.

Every ground of an objection is now shown

Prosecution

●When an examiner raises several grounds of the same type in one round (for example, multiple inventive-step arguments against different claims), the opened objection now shows each ground in full — its claims, the documents it relies on, and its verbatim text — instead of only the first. The PDF highlights all of the grounds. The grid still groups them under one chip per type for scanning.

Clearer message when no examination reports are on file (Australian applications)

Prosecution

●For an Australian application that has lapsed, expired, or proceeded to grant, the prosecution view now says so when no examination reports were retrieved, instead of suggesting that examination might not have begun yet.

European oral-proceedings summons reads as one step

●When an EP summons to oral proceedings and its accompanying annex of objections share a date, the prosecution grid now shows them as a single "Summons to attend oral proceedings (with annex)" step, instead of a separate summons tag beneath the annex. Genuinely separate notes (such as a later consultation annex) still appear on their own.

Examination report highlighting now carries across page breaks

ProsecutionUI

●When you open an objection, the highlighted passage in the examination report now continues onto the next page when the objection runs across a page break — previously the highlight could stop at the bottom of the first page.

Objection highlighting shows the first time you open one

ProsecutionUI

●The first time you open an objection in a session, the report now scrolls straight to the highlighted passage and shows it, instead of only doing so when you opened an objection a second time.
●If a passage can't be pinpointed, the report still opens to read in full (a brief network hiccup no longer hides the document).

Family diagram: connector lines no longer cross an application box

Family

●On some families a connector line could run straight across an application box that sat between a parent and its national-phase filings. The connector now routes cleanly below the box, so every application stays readable. The same fix carries through to the exported PDF.

Portrait diagram: dragging an application now moves its connectors

Family

●In the portrait diagram, dragging an application box now carries its connector lines with it, so you can rearrange the layout and the relationships stay attached. (The landscape diagram already behaved this way.)

2026-06-19

Mobile family table: member titles stay on screen

Family

●On a phone, the family table's member cards no longer run off the right edge; each card now fits the screen, so titles and status are readable without sideways scrolling.
●Each member's title now sits on its own line within the card, so it isn't squeezed by the status badge. The full title is still one tap away when you expand a card.

Clearer family diagram on families with several provisional applications

Family

●On these families, boxes that used to sit on top of one another are now separated, so every application stays legible.
●Where several applications share the same children, they are ordered to keep the connector lines from crossing, making the relationships easier to follow.

Agent of record now appears reliably for European family members

FamilyPerf

●The agent of record, shown in a member's bibliographic details, now resolves reliably for European applications. A retrieval hiccup could previously leave it blank even when an agent was on record; it now recovers on the next view.

2026-06-18

Document ranges in examination reports now capture every cited document

Prosecution

●When an examiner relies on a range of cited documents (for example D2–D5), the objection now lists every document in the range (D2, D3, D4 and D5), not just the first and last. Previously the in-between documents could be missed.
●This applies to newly retrieved or uploaded examination reports; reports already in your view keep their current citations until refreshed.

IDS Assist recognises documents already covered by an earlier application in the chain

●For a US continuation or divisional, a family-cited document already on the file of an earlier application in the same chain — a parent, grandparent or further back (cited by that application's examiner, or submitted to it) — is now treated as already covered rather than flagged again, so the review list focuses on what is genuinely new to this application.
●The header notes how many were covered this way, and you can expand the list to see each of those documents and which earlier application it is of record in.

IDS Assist: more "First cited in" entries now show their date

Prosecution

●Where a document was cited under a combined reference (for example a PCT publication together with its US equivalent), the "First cited in" entry now resolves and shows when and where it was first cited.
●For documents carried by a European search report, the originating search report's date is now shown.

Searching a US application by its number is more reliable

SearchPerf

●Typing a US application number in the usual series/serial form (for example US17/106,694) now resolves the family reliably, including the most recent series.

Prosecution page no longer stretches too wide

Prosecution

●On families with many examination rounds, only the round grid now scrolls sideways on its own; the rest of the prosecution page, including IDS Assist and the documents table, stays within the window.
●The round grid's horizontal scrollbar now matches the rest of the app's styling instead of showing the browser's default bar.

IDS Assist covers applications allowed without examination reports

Prosecution

●A US application that was allowed without any examination reports still has its own list of cited documents, and IDS Assist now retrieves and checks it like any other — so it no longer gets stuck on a "checking the record…" indicator or appear with nothing to show.
●Concluded applications are still grouped together for reference; the group now shows a compact list of application numbers, and selecting one opens that application's reference details (its family-cited documents and where each appears) right there.

Office filter shows every jurisdiction

●The jurisdiction filter now shows every office in the family directly, instead of tucking a single office away behind a "more" dropdown when there was room to show it.

2026-06-17

Complete PCT national-phase deadline list

Data

●The list of PCT national-phase entry deadlines (opened from a PCT/WO row's deadline) now covers the full set of contracting states — 27 more jurisdictions than before, including Switzerland, Indonesia, Kenya, Serbia, Algeria, Iraq, North Macedonia and the OAPI regional office — each shown with its full country name.
●Azerbaijan's deadline was corrected to 30 months (it had previously shown the later figure).
●All entries were re-verified against the WIPO PCT Applicant's Guide. As always, confirm a deadline against the live WIPO data before relying on it.

IDS Assist now shows for every US application

●IDS Assist now appears for every US application in a family — including granted ones — and its content tells you whether there is anything to review, rather than the section only appearing when there were gaps.
●For an application still under examination, family-cited documents not yet in its record are flagged as candidates to review. For an application whose examination has concluded (for example, a granted patent), the same list is shown for reference only, with no review prompt, since no disclosure can be added to it.
●The "Cited in" column is now labelled "First cited in" — it shows where each document was first cited in each other family member.

IDS Assist: tidier "First cited in" column and a counterpart-citation timing note

Prosecution

●The "First cited in" column now shows just the single earliest family member that cited each document, with a "+N other members" control to reveal the rest. This keeps the column tidy when a document was cited against several members of the family.
●For a US application still under examination, where a document was first cited by a counterpart national or regional office, IDS Assist now notes that earliest citation (office, report and date) and that a certification window may apply. It is a prompt to check the file against the operative date, not a deadline we have calculated, and it states that the duty to disclose continues regardless.

New features now highlight themselves to returning users

●When a new feature ships, returning users now get a brief one-step highlight for just that feature the first time they encounter it, instead of having to replay the whole tour. (The IDS Assist panel is the first to use this.)

2026-06-16

IDS Assist: family-cited documents shown against your US application's own record

ProsecutionFamily

●Each US application in a family now has a single IDS Assist table listing every document cited against the other family members, with two columns: Cited in (which other member cited it, in what report and when, and the examiner's document label) and Disclosed to USPTO (whether it already appears in this application's own record, and how).
●A document not yet in the application's record is flagged in amber, "Not in this record · review for IDS", as a candidate to review for an Information Disclosure Statement. When every document is already of record, the header confirms it ("all N disclosed").
●The table is now clickable end to end: a Cited in entry opens the citing office's report (or jumps to that member), and a flagged document opens for review. This replaces the earlier pair of separate notes with one table that shows the gaps and the already-disclosed documents together.

IDS Assist entries now open — and cite — the source document

●The Cited in and USPTO record entries link to the source: a US examiner-cited or applicant-disclosed entry opens the exact document it came from (the references cited by the examiner, or the Information Disclosure Statement); a "cited in an objection" entry opens that objection; and a search entry opens the office's file wrapper where the search report lives.
●Each entry now also cites its source document by name and date (for example "List of references cited by examiner · 9 Apr 2026", or "European search report"), shown beneath the entry — so you can identify exactly where a citation came from even when the document itself can't be opened.
●The long "Disclosed to USPTO" column was shortened to USPTO record so it no longer crowds the relevance column.
●As before, this surface is for US applications, and whether any document matters for an application remains your assessment.

2026-06-14

US restriction requirements and species elections now show in the prosecution timeline

Prosecution

●A US examiner's requirement to restrict, or to elect a single species or embodiment for examination, now appears as its own step in the prosecution grid: distinct from a rejection, and labelled as a requirement.
●The applicant's election in response (with or without traverse) appears alongside it, paired to the requirement it answers.
●These are shown under their own "Restriction / election" heading rather than being lumped in with unity of invention, since the US requirement is a different procedure with no direct equivalent in other offices.

2026-06-12

Prosecution view keeps your data on screen through network hiccups

Prosecution

●Returning to a Scatter tab after working elsewhere no longer risks the prosecution grid going blank. Previously a brief connection drop at the wrong moment could wipe loaded rounds, citations and responses from view (the data was safe, but the screen showed an empty grid with no explanation). Loaded data now stays on screen through a failed refresh, and the next successful refresh brings it up to date.

Prosecution retrievals that fail now say so, with a retry

Prosecution

●When prosecution data can't be retrieved for an application (a slow or unavailable source, or a timeout), the row now says the retrieval failed and offers the retrieve button and PDF upload, instead of looking as if retrieval was never attempted.
●If a retrieved report can't be processed during a load, the affected application now says how many reports are waiting; they're processed automatically on the next load.
●Australian applications whose records the office's online service won't return now say the records couldn't be retrieved, instead of implying examination may not have begun. Very old Australian applications are correctly described as outside the online records' coverage.

Clearing prosecution data resets fully

Prosecution

●After "Clear all data", the searched-prior-art lists reliably re-sync on the next retrieval, and a refresh queued just before the clear can no longer repopulate the view with just-cleared rounds.

2026-06-11

Australian claim amendments no longer missing from responses

Prosecution

●Some Australian examination responses showed only the response letter, with the amended claims (clean and marked-up) silently missing — affected filings where the office names each part of the submission descriptively, and filings whose claim pages use a plain "Claims:" heading. Both shapes are now recognised: response entries show their Claims and marked-up chips, and the marked-up copy is correctly told apart from the clean one. Already-stored responses were repaired in place — 25 previously-hidden claim documents across 10 Australian applications are now visible.

Family diagram no longer breaks when filtering

Family

●Using the jurisdiction or status filter buttons while on the diagram no longer scrambles the view. Previously each filter click rebuilt the diagram from scratch: a portrait diagram silently flipped back to landscape, your zoom and position were lost, and the re-fitted view sometimes landed clipped or off-centre. The diagram now updates in place — portrait stays portrait, and the layout animates smoothly to the filtered family.
●Filtered-out family members no longer reappear as phantom "Provisional (inferred)" boxes. When a filter hid a member that others claim priority from (a lapsed parent application, say), the diagram wrongly re-drew it as a dashed inferred-provisional node — cluttering the filtered view with ghost boxes carrying the wrong status. Filtered members now disappear cleanly; only genuine provisionals (priorities that were never published family members) show as dashed nodes.

Australian voluntary amendments in the prosecution view

Prosecution

●Applicant-initiated amendments to the specification on Australian applications — including amendments filed after acceptance, and a patentee's amendments following a third-party re-examination report — now appear in the prosecution view as voluntary amendments, with the statement of proposed amendments and the amended claims (clean and marked-up) attached. Previously these filings were missing from the timeline.

2026-06-10

Upload examination reports one round at a time

ProsecutionPerf

●Uploading an examination report PDF now adds it to the rounds already stored for that application instead of replacing them. So you can upload one report per PDF as each round arrives and they accumulate into the round-by-round view, rather than each upload wiping the last. Re-uploading a report for a round you already have updates that round in place. (To start fresh, use "Clear all data".)

Search waits for matches instead of racing them

●If you type a number and hit Enter quickly, search now waits a moment for the matching suggestions to load rather than jumping ahead and telling you there are no results before the matches appear. When the matches arrive: a single match opens straight away, several show a list (with a count) for you to pick, and a genuine no-match still searches the full database. The stale "0 results" flash and lingering out-of-date suggestions are gone.

Portrait family diagram

Family

●Switching the family diagram to portrait no longer briefly shows the landscape view's downward connector arrows while the side-to-side layout computes — it shows a short "computing layout" state, then the portrait arrows (running left-to-right) appear correctly.
●PCT (international) nodes are drawn as a hexagon; in portrait its connector arrowheads are no longer hidden behind the hexagon's pointed corners — the connectors now meet the hexagon's points cleanly so the arrows are fully visible.

2026-06-09

Agent of record and member bibliographic details

Family

●Opening a family member (the "Open" panel from the table) now has a Biblio tab: the applicant, inventors, filing / publication / grant dates, priority claims, and publications at a glance. For US, Australian, European, and New Zealand members it also shows the agent of record — the firm handling the case, and for US the named registered attorneys with their registration numbers — drawn live from each office's register.

2026-06-08

New Zealand prosecution

Prosecution

●Prosecution data now covers New Zealand. Examination reports for New Zealand family members appear in the round-by-round prosecution view, with each report's objections laid out, and the applicant's responses (replies, amendments) shown alongside the round they answer. Source PDFs are available to read and download throughout.

Search New Zealand patents by their NZ number

●Searching a New Zealand application number directly now resolves its patent family, including cases that previously returned nothing — surfacing the New Zealand member (with its examination reports and responses) alongside its relatives. Applications whose only priority claim is to an early provisional application — common in practice — are now handled too.

2026-06-07

Prosecution: family-cited documents not yet in a US application's record

ProsecutionFamily

●For a pending US application, the prosecution view now surfaces documents that were cited against other members of the same family but do not appear in that US application's own record. These are candidates to review for a US Information Disclosure Statement, with chips showing which family member cited each document and whether it was cited by an examiner, found in a search, or disclosed in an IDS. The list is collapsed by default, per US application.
●It is decision support, not advice: it never says a document must be disclosed, and whether anything is material or should be filed remains your assessment. The panel is honest about its limits (it reflects the family data retrieved so far, matches exact publications rather than family equivalents, and reproduces relevance categories only where the searching office provided one). Candidates also export to a dedicated sheet in the prosecution spreadsheet for IDS preparation.

Cleaner "Identified in search" list

●The list of searched documents is now collapsed by default, and when opened it separates what the office found in its search from the longer list of documents the applicant disclosed in an information disclosure statement (collapsed on its own).
●The same cited document in two different formats (for example by a European search report and a US information disclosure statement) now collapses to a single row instead of appearing twice, and search reports the applicant listed as references no longer show up as if they were prior art themselves.

2026-06-06

European applications: the prosecution view no longer lists PCT-phase filings

Prosecution

●An EP application's prosecution now shows only its EP-phase filings. Amendments and replies made during the earlier international (PCT) phase appear on the PCT/international application instead of being repeated on the EP one. The EP-entry reply to the international search opinion stays on the EP application, since it is filed there.

Clearer Documents Cited section, with source explanations

Prosecution

●The prior-art-not-objected list beneath Documents Cited is now labelled "Identified in search", and small info buttons explain where the documents come from. The relevance-category and examiner-vs-applicant detail moved into the spreadsheet export to keep the on-screen table compact.

An honest note when searched prior art can't be retrieved

ProsecutionSearch

●When the search-report source for an application can't be reached (or carries no list), the prosecution view now says so plainly beneath Documents Cited — "a searched-prior-art list could not be retrieved for this application; this does not necessarily mean none exists" — instead of silently showing nothing, which could be misread as "the examiner found nothing".

Searched-but-not-objected prior art now covers US applications

ProsecutionSearch

●US applications now get an "Identified in search" section too, completing AU/EP/US/PCT coverage: the documents the examiner cited in the search (or the applicant disclosed in an information disclosure statement) but never used to raise a rejection. For US documents, whether each was found by the examiner (a useful freedom-to-operate signal) or submitted by the applicant is recorded in the spreadsheet export.

Searched-but-not-objected prior art now covers international (PCT) applications

ProsecutionSearch

●The "Identified in search" section beneath Documents Cited now also surfaces the prior art listed in the international search report for PCT/international members, alongside the European coverage added yesterday. The section flags when it includes a document the search marked as particularly relevant but the examiner never objected on (worth a second look); the per-document relevance category is in the spreadsheet export.
●The "Identified in search" section now appears for more PCT/international applications — including some that previously showed nothing, where the international search report's citation list is now recovered. Where the report was scanned rather than typed, the relevance category for some documents may not be available; the document itself is still listed.

2026-06-05

Prior art the examiner searched but did not object on

ProsecutionSearch

●The Documents Cited table now also surfaces prior art the examiner found in the search but never used to raise an objection, in a collapsible "Identified in search" section beneath the cited documents. The section opens automatically and flags when it holds documents that are novelty-relevant or priority-dependent — the ones worth a second look for freedom-to-operate or information-disclosure work; the per-document relevance category (for example "Technological background", "Earlier filing, later published") is in the spreadsheet export. Available for European applications to start.

Older US applicant responses now show their arguments

Prosecution

●Some older US applicant responses were filed as scanned documents, and their arguments came through blank in the prosecution view. They now display their text like any other response. (Already-loaded families pick this up the next time their prosecution data is refreshed.)

2026-06-04

View an examination report as a side panel or full-screen

ProsecutionUI

●The examination-report view now works either way: keep it docked beside the prosecution grid, or expand it to a full-screen view with one click (and dock it back the same way). Your choice is remembered for the next report you open.
●Opening a report full-screen now keeps the objection-by-objection tabs and the highlighted passages — previously the full-screen view only showed the plain document, so you had to use the side panel to step through each objection. Both views are now identical in content; only the size differs.

Simpler row-detail panel

●Opening a member from the family table now shows Claims and History (and EP validations where relevant). The prosecution breakdown that used to sit here has moved entirely to the dedicated Prosecution view, which covers the same ground in more detail — so the row panel is no longer cluttered with a duplicate.

Family-diagram PDF export matches the screen for wide families

FamilyData

●When one application fans out to many national phases, the connecting lines in the exported PDF now route as a clean horizontal bus with one line dropping to each member — the same readable layout you see on screen. Previously the PDF still bunched those lines into a dense cluster even though the on-screen diagram didn't.

"Under examination" now names the latest examiner action

Prosecution

●An application under examination now shows its latest examiner action on the status pill (e.g. "Examination report No. 3") instead of a generic "Under examination", so you can see at a glance how far prosecution has gone — and it tracks the most recent action, not the first. The family diagram stays a clean status overview (the standard category labels), with the detail available on hover.

Pending applications show their latest status event, not a bare "Filed"

Status

●A member with no granted/lapsed/examination status used to read a plain "Filed". It now shows its most recent legal-status event instead (e.g. "Request for examination filed", "Publication", a recorded ownership change), so you can see at a glance where each pending member actually stands. The status colour is unchanged — only the label gets more specific. Applies across the family table, the diagram, the prosecution view, and the spreadsheet export.

2026-06-03

Objection highlights open faster

ProsecutionUIPerf

●Highlighted passages are now prepared in the background as soon as a report's objections appear in the prosecution grid, so the first objection you open shows its highlight straight away instead of pausing to locate it. Switching between objections in the same report, and re-opening one you have already viewed, are instant too.

Prosecution grid scrolls sideways when it's wider than the screen

ProsecutionUI

●Families with several examination rounds (or a narrow window) could leave the right-hand round columns cut off with no way to reach them. The grid now scrolls horizontally to bring every round into view, with the column headers pinned in place as you scroll down.

Fewer phantom provisional applications in family diagrams

Family

●Some German applications are recorded with the serial's leading zero in one place and without it in another, so the two forms were treated as separate applications and a phantom provisional inferred. Both forms now resolve to the same application; affected families are corrected automatically.

Clearer family diagrams when one application has many national phases

Family

●When a single priority fans out to many national-phase members (large pharmaceutical families, for example), the connecting lines used to bunch into a dense cluster of near-parallel verticals before spreading to the members. They now route as a clean horizontal bus with one line dropping to each member, so the relationships are easy to follow. (The diagram's PDF export is unchanged for now — a follow-up.)

Search suggestions no longer get stuck on "0 results"

●After a brief connection hiccup, a search could keep showing "0 results" for a particular number for the rest of the session even once the connection recovered (pressing Enter still found the patent). Suggestions now recover as soon as the connection does.

2026-06-02

See each objection highlighted in the examiner's report

ProsecutionUI

●Clicking an objection now opens the examiner's report itself, scrolled to and highlighting the whole passage the objection is drawn from, with a toggle to the structured summary. Works across jurisdictions, including scanned reports with no underlying text.

European pre-examination amendments separate the arguments from the amended claims

Prosecution

●A pre-examination amendment was showing the amended claim set under "Arguments"; the arguments letter and the amended claims are now correctly separated, each opening the right document, with the marked-up version available as its own tab. Existing European applications corrected automatically.

The product tour spotlights each step and moves more smoothly

Onboarding

●The guided tour now dims the rest of the page to spotlight the feature it points at, and the highlight and tip card glide between steps instead of jumping.

Filed documents open in one consistent viewer

●Applicant responses now open in the same centred full-document viewer as examination reports and the specification, with their component tabs where applicable. Clicking an objection still opens the side panel, since that shows structured text rather than a document.

2026-06-01

Search suggestions, links, and family diagrams corrected

FamilySearch

●Clicking a search suggestion now always opens the right family — suggestions navigate by the unambiguous publication number, fixing cases where an application number matched a different patent's publication.
●WO members now link to the correct Google Patents page, built from the publication number rather than the application number.
●Family diagrams no longer show phantom provisional applications where a shared priority was recorded in two formats across offices — both now resolve to the same member.
●The family status chart now fills each column in proportion to the whole family, rather than scaling to the largest segment.
●Citations with no downloadable document hide their download button (with a brief notice) instead of showing a browser error; cited prior-art links fall back to a second patent database when the primary one has no record.

2026-05-31

See where a granted European patent is in force

Status

●Granted European members now have a "Validations" tab listing the contracting states where the patent is validated and whether each is in force (green, at the top) or lapsed (struck through, below), with the date and description of each state's most recent event.
●Built from the per-state events the European Patent Register publishes; coverage is uneven, so a missing state doesn't necessarily mean the patent isn't in force there (the panel notes this). The tab appears only on granted European members.

2026-05-30

Summons to oral proceedings now sit inside the round they followed

Prosecution

●A Summons to oral proceedings (and any other follow-up procedural notice) now appears as a compact chip at the bottom of the examination round it followed, rather than in a separate trailing column — so a round reads top to bottom: examiner's report, applicant's response, then the procedural notice that closed it out. A notice with no preceding round stays in the "Other" column, which only appears when there's content for it.

Tooltips on truncated chip labels

●Compact chips in the prosecution grid — pre-examination amendments, procedural notices, and the abbreviated arguments excerpt under a response — now show their full label on hover, helpful when a long flavour-label is cut off by the ellipsis.

Documents Cited no longer stretches for one long reference

Prosecution

●An unusually long reference title (common when a non-patent citation is spelled out in full) was widening the whole Reference column and leaving the rest sparse. Each cell's width is now capped, with the full text on hover.

Pre-examination amendments now live alongside the spec-as-filed

Prosecution

●The separate Pre-Examination column is gone; pre-examination amendments now appear inline in the Application column, just below the as-filed specification link, and clicking a pre-examination chip opens the same response panel as before. The grid no longer reserves a whole column for the family when only one row had a pre-examination amendment.

PCT application breadcrumb uses the canonical PCT form

●For PCT (WO) applications, the breadcrumb (and the prosecution grid's Application column) now show the canonical PCT form — for example "PCT/CA/2003/001103" — instead of an opaque receiving-office serial like "WO0301103".

Search stays responsive during slow family fetches, and surfaces API errors

FamilySearch

●The search palette (Ctrl+K) no longer freezes during a family fetch — you can keep typing or hit Enter on a new query to abort the in-flight one and start again.
●When the suggestion service can't be reached, the palette now shows "Couldn't reach search API" rather than silently reading "0 results"; the "0 results" state is reserved for genuine no-matches.

Prosecution grid no longer inflates for procedural EP documents

Prosecution

●European applications with oral-proceedings stages were showing a full column for each procedural document (a Summons, a consultation follow-up), burying the substantive examiner outputs. Those now collapse into a single rightmost "Other" column of compact chips; the main columns hold only the reports and Annexes that carry objections. Positive-signal rounds (a clean acceptance report, a clean international evaluation) keep their own column.

Family overview status legend now reads as a small bar chart

FamilyStatusUI

●The full-width status bar under the family stats has been folded into the legend itself: each status label now carries a small horizontal bar under its count, so the family's distribution reads at a glance without a separate full-width bar.

2026-05-29

Applications under examination now read correctly

Prosecution

●An application being examined no longer sits under the generic "Filed" status. Two signals now drive the "Under examination" reading: the examining office has issued its first examination report, or Scatter has retrieved the examination history (even where the official status hasn't caught up).
●The corrected status flows through the status pill, the status filter, the family diagram, and the dashboard counts. Granted, accepted, lapsed, or expired applications are never affected — only those with no clearer signal are upgraded.

2026-05-28

Family diagram layout corrections

FamilyUI

●PCT applications no longer overlap their own child junction on multi-parent families: the PCT node was being pulled below the routing point it fans through, leaving it lower than its own children; it now sits correctly above them.
●German provisional applications link to all their claiming members. Some offices record the provisional's number in one format and others use a different layout for the same number; both now resolve to one provisional node, so it links to the PCT and all national-phase members rather than dead-ending at the one member that used a particular format.

Prior-art citation chips always show their tooltip

ProsecutionUI

●Hovering a citation label (D1, D2, a patent number) on an objection card now reliably shows the full reference. On some citations — particularly older European references whose link couldn't be verified — the tooltip was silently stopping after the first hover; the chip element is now stable regardless of link state.

Pinned EP applications with check digits now open correctly

●European application numbers sometimes carry a trailing check digit (for example EP12794187.5). A pinned one could navigate to a broken URL; the pin now stores and navigates using the clean application number, matching the form the EPO's own systems accept.

Status pills track current legal status more accurately

Status

●European patents that survived the opposition window now read "No opposition filed within time limit" instead of carrying the earlier intent-to-grant text indefinitely.
●Withdrawn events (kept in the legal record with a "deleted" marker) are no longer treated as live — they previously overstated a case, e.g. showing granted after an intent-to-grant was withdrawn and examination resumed. The pill now reads from whatever happened next.
●Korean applications under examination now read "Under examination" instead of "Filed" — the examiner's opinion-submission notice wasn't being picked up before.

Korean examination reports keep their mailing dates

Prosecution

●Korean examination reports use Hangul date markers (the characters for year/month/day) the date verifier didn't recognise, so a correctly read mailing date was thrown out and the round dropped into the manual "missing date" prompt. Hangul dates and the Korean dot-separated format (like 2026. 4. 20.) now verify automatically, so KR rounds slot into the grid in date order.

2026-05-27

Prosecution grid shows the publication number on the spec button

Prosecution

●The As initially published button on each prosecution row now shows the actual publication number (for example EP1000000A1) instead of a generic label, so with several members open it's clear which specification you're about to open.

2026-05-26

Older examination reports now fill in their PDF previews automatically

ProsecutionData

●Some older stored reports had no copy of their source PDF, so the round cell wasn't clickable. Scatter now fills these in automatically the next time you open the family; stored objections and citations are untouched.

Search tells you when there's nothing to autocomplete

●Typing a complete patent number that matches nothing in the autocomplete now says so in the dropdown, rather than letting you hit Enter and wait for a doomed full lookup. The autocomplete doesn't index every record, so pressing Enter still runs the full lookup if you think the number is right.

2026-05-24

Filed responses load alongside the examiner's reports in one pass

ProsecutionPerf

●For heavier cases (European especially), the examiner's reports and your filed responses now load together in a single pass — the round-by-round grid completes the first time, rather than surfacing the reports first and filling in responses on a later visit.

2026-05-23

Larger examination reports load reliably, and faster

ProsecutionPerf

●Retrieving long or multi-document reports that previously could run out of time and fail now completes reliably, and faster: each round appears as soon as it's ready, and a case that doesn't finish in one pass resumes where it left off instead of starting over.

2026-05-22

Fix: correct application numbers for older US patents

●Older US patents (filed before ~2001) were showing the wrong application number — e.g. 20/685,698 where the real number is 09/206,856. It's now decoded correctly to its US series and serial, so it reads right and matches the official record.
●The File Wrapper and Global Dossier links for those members were carrying the same wrong number; they now use the corrected one. (The very oldest US applications predate the USPTO's online file-wrapper, so some pre-2001 file-wrapper pages may still have no record — a source coverage limit, not a wrong link.)

2026-05-21

European examination reports load more reliably

ProsecutionPerf

●Pulling examination reports for some European applications could stall on "Downloading…" or come back empty even though documents existed. Retrieval now completes reliably, a slow response times out cleanly instead of freezing the page, and a transient hiccup on one page retries rather than abandoning the whole document.

Fix: cited documents no longer disappear in the prosecution view

Prosecution

●On some families whose prosecution history comes from the international (PCT) phase, the Documents Cited list could appear and then vanish once loading finished. It now stays put — driven by the stored prosecution data, so a slow or unsuccessful background refresh can't wipe it.

Preview the specification as initially published, from the prosecution view

Prosecution

●Each application in the prosecution grid now carries an As initially published link: click Specification (PDF) to preview the application as first published (description, claims, drawings), with a Download button alongside. It always pulls the application publication (what entered examination), not the granted text. Coverage spans EP / WO / AU and modern US / JP / KR, cached after the first open. Where an application was only ever published at grant (some older US patents), no link appears.

2026-05-20

Translate-to-English now works for examination reports in any language

Prosecution

●The Translate to English button in the objection panel used to appear only on German, French, and Spanish reports. The detector now recognises non-English content from the script of the letters rather than a fixed language list, so any non-Latin-script report (CJK, Cyrillic, Arabic, Greek, …) — and any Latin-script report lacking the connective tissue of English — surfaces the button. The translation itself was always language-agnostic; this just shows the button everywhere it should.

2026-05-19

Documents Cited: one-click PDF download + English-translated patent links

ProsecutionPerfData

●The Documents Cited table now has a Download icon next to every patent reference — the full PDF downloads directly, cached after the first time. Coverage spans EP / WO / US (grants + pre-grant) and major-office grants; pre-1980 and obscure utility-model series may have no downloadable PDF and still show the patent link.
●Patent links for non-English publications now default to the English translation overlay, saving a click on every Japanese, Korean, or Chinese citation. Non-patent references still go to a scholarly search.

Cleaner prosecution grid: status at the right, voluntary amendments grouped, side panel fixes

ProsecutionStatusUI

●Status moved to the rightmost column, reading as the outcome of the timeline rather than identity info; the application cell now shows office, number, dates, and a file-wrapper link.
●Voluntary amendments are always grouped in the Pre-examination column — a pre-examination amendment is an applicant-initiated submission, not a reply to a particular examiner output, so it no longer lands in the First Report column when filed after a search opinion.
●The side panel never shows the wrong document: when several documents classify as the same component (e.g. a Rule 161 reply bundled with a cover sheet, or a US Preliminary Amendment with both an instruction sheet and the full amended specification), it picks the substantive content over the procedural marker.
●The marked-up tab is labelled "Specification (marked-up)", and "Source text not available" now links to the office file wrapper so you can fetch the document yourself.

2026-05-18

AU response side panel now shows Claims, Description, and a marked-up amendments view

ProsecutionUI

Click any Australian response in the prosecution grid and you'll see four tabs in the side panel: Arguments, Claims, Description, and Marked-up.

Older filings that only ship one bundled PDF still show as a single Arguments tab. Filings that omit one of the components show only the tabs that have content.

●For applications you retrieved before today's change, clear and re-fetch via "Clear all data" in the Prosecution tab to pick up the new tabs.
●Arguments — the response letter to IP Australia.
●Claims — the clean amended claims (the legally operative version).
●Description — the clean amended description.
●Marked-up — the track-changes view bundling claim and description amendments in one document. Useful for seeing exactly what changed without diffing the clean copies by eye.

Better objection classification, smarter citation pickup, and more useful "no data" messages

Prosecution

A few prosecution-grid improvements landed today.

●Objections are now classified by what the examiner is arguing in the body, not by the section heading. Australian Section 40 reports often head a single objection with all the grounds the section covers ("support, disclosure, clarity, lack of unity") even when only one ground is actually being raised. The grid will now read the body and label the objection by the issue actually argued.
●Citations stick to objections that refer to documents generally. An inventive-step objection that says "claim 1 lacks an inventive contribution over the cited documents" will now pick up the documents being cited from the surrounding context, instead of showing an empty citation row.
●Australian responses now show the actual response letter, not the cover sheet. For modern Australian filings (the multi-PDF style introduced in recent years), the side panel was rendering IP Australia's procedural cover sheet listing attachments, not the substantive letter itself. Fixed. For applications where you already retrieved Australian responses before today's change, you can clear and re-fetch via "Clear all data" in the Prosecution tab to pick up the corrected shape.
●US "no data" message now distinguishes three cases. Previously every US application with no office actions saw the same "applications before 2001 aren't available" message — including applications that were granted on first-action allowance, and applications that simply haven't been examined yet. The grid now tells you which case applies.
●The "Server reports N rounds but no data found locally" warning is gone. When the system detects that the cached round count doesn't match what's stored locally, it now silently re-fetches fresh data instead of asking you to click a button. You see a brief loading state and the data appears.

2026-05-17

Freshness indicator next to each status pill

Status

Hover any dot for the full label. The status pills themselves are unchanged.

●Rows whose status comes from the wider mirror data now carry a small grey dot next to the status pill, telling you the status may lag a few days behind the office's own register.
●No dot — status is confirmed against the office of origin (currently AU and US — Scatter direct-fetches from those registers).
●Grey dot — status comes from the mirror data, which can lag a few days behind. Hover for which office is affected.

Applicant responses extended to US, European, and PCT applications

Prosecution

Each response carries a specific flavour label so the kind of submission is unambiguous at a glance:

Response components are split for fast scanning: written arguments show a short preview of the opening line; amended claims and amended description appear as separate chips that open the full text in the side panel. Procedural cover sheets and transmittal forms stay available for download but are hidden from the primary view to keep the cell uncluttered.

●The applicant response surface now covers every jurisdiction Scatter retrieves prosecution data from. Following the morning's Australian launch, US, European, and PCT/WO responses now appear in the prosecution grid alongside the examiner reports they reply to. The same response block, side panel, and Excel export work uniformly across all four jurisdictions.
●US responses distinguish a response after rejection, an amendment after notice of allowance, and a request for continued examination.
●European responses distinguish a reply to an examination communication, a reply to an international search opinion, and a PCT preliminary examination amendment.
●PCT/international responses surface preliminary examination amendments and replies on the international application row, in addition to the same documents appearing on the European national-phase row.

Applicant responses now visible alongside examiner reports in the prosecution grid

Prosecution

Each response block shows the filing date, whether it was a substantive response or a voluntary amendment, and a preview of the opening arguments. Clicking opens a side panel with the full text broken down by component: arguments, amended claims, and amended description where available. Source PDFs download directly from the panel.

The Excel export gains a third sheet for responses alongside the existing sheets for the objection grid and Documents Cited.

This initial rollout covers Australian applications. Support for US, European, and PCT applications is being added in the sessions immediately following.

●The prosecution grid now shows both sides of the prosecution history. Applicant responses — including responses to examination reports and voluntary amendments filed at any stage — appear below the relevant examiner report in the same column. A response filed before any examination began appears in a separate column to the left of the grid.

Smoother loading and a centred patent family diagram

FamilyPerf

●Loading screens now preview the page you're about to see. Searching a family, opening prosecution data, or drafting a letter now shows a layout-matching skeleton of the upcoming view rather than a generic loading indicator. The page no longer reflows on data arrival.
●The patent family diagram now opens centred. Switching to the Diagram view used to show the diagram briefly off to one side before swooping into place. It now lands centred on the first reveal. Filter changes and orientation swaps still animate smoothly.

2026-05-15

Improved accepted/granted status for Canadian, Korean, and Brazilian families

Status

●Canadian and Korean applications that have been formally accepted now show as granted. Previously, a Canadian or Korean application that had received an official notice of intent to grant would still appear as "Filed" in the status column, even though no further substantive examination was pending. The status pill now turns green at acceptance, matching how Australian, European, and US allowances are already handled.
●An additional Brazilian grant signal is now recognised. A second gazette chapter code used by INPI for patent issuance was not previously covered; affected applications showed "Filed" instead of "Granted".

Upload reliability, dark-mode terms page, and extraction resilience

StatusPerfData

●Uploading an examination report now works reliably from any row. A regression introduced earlier this week caused the Upload PDF button on empty rows to silently do nothing: picking a file appeared to succeed but no extraction ran and no progress appeared. Affected all jurisdictions. This is now fixed.
●The Terms and Privacy page is now readable in dark mode. Previously, switching to dark mode left the terms page with dark text on a dark background. The page also now correctly lists all the jurisdictions we retrieve prosecution history from.
●Transient network interruptions during AI extraction now recover automatically. If a brief connection blip occurs mid-extraction, the tool retries once and continues without surfacing an error. Persistent failures still report as before.

2026-05-14

Examination report PDFs available for download and inline preview

ProsecutionPerfData

●Every examination report in the prosecution grid now carries the original PDF. Each round cell now leads with a document chip naming the report type and mailing date, with a download icon for saving the original to your records and a click target that opens the PDF inline in a preview pane. Reports retrieved automatically and reports you upload both behave the same way, so a single attorney workflow covers either path. Earlier reports captured before this change keep their objection cards but show the title only — re-running them on the file wrapper will pull the PDF on the next pass.

Table and prosecution grid usability improvements

ProsecutionFamily

●The family table now scrolls sideways between tablet and desktop widths. On screens between about 768 and 1024 pixels wide the table previously collapsed into a compact card layout, discarding most of the column detail. It now stays as a full table and scrolls horizontally, so all columns remain accessible at that size range. Cards are reserved for phone-width screens only.
●Opening a side panel no longer squashes the family table. At desktop widths, opening the prosecution, claims, or history panel for a family member was pushing the table through its breakpoint and collapsing the column headers. The sidebar now steps back automatically when a panel opens, so the table keeps its full width.
●The family status bar now shows an amber segment for applications under examination. The coloured overview bar at the top of a search result previously grouped examined applications under the same grey band as pending applications. Applications under active examination now appear in the amber segment, matching the amber pill in the table.
●The prosecution history grid scrolls as a unit. The application column was previously pinned to the left side of the grid so it stayed visible while the examination round columns scrolled away. The whole grid now scrolls together, keeping the application context tied to its examination rounds.

2026-05-13

Status now reflects what the office of origin actually says

Status

●Australian acceptance and US allowance now show as soon as the office records them. Status data previously could lag the office of origin by weeks or months — most visibly for Australian applications that had been accepted but were still showing as "Filed" or "Under examination". Status for Australian and US applications now reflects the office of origin's own record. A small tooltip on the status pill indicates when fresher data is in play.
●Applications under examination are now identified explicitly. Previously, an application that had been examined but not yet granted, refused, or lapsed would show as "Filed" — indistinguishable from one that had only just been published. Substantive examination signals now flip the status to "Under examination". Initial coverage applies to European and Japanese applications where the underlying signal is registered; other jurisdictions will follow as the signal coverage grows.
●Family diagram and dashboard counts now stay in lockstep with the table. When the status pill in the table reflected a fresher signal, the diagram and the "accepted" count on the dashboard could remain on the older value. They now update together every time.
●"Accepted" applications render alongside granted ones in the diagram and statistics. An Australian application that has been accepted but not yet sealed is treated as alive in the same way a granted patent is — same colour in the diagram, counted in the same dashboard statistic, sorted alongside granted in the status column. The label "Accepted" is preserved so the distinction is still visible.

Search, citations, and prosecution grid refinements

ProsecutionSearch

●Publications in non-Latin scripts now show with an English translation alongside. When the queried application is Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Russian, or another non-Latin-script publication, the title and applicant name appear in the dashboard header in the original script with the English translation shown immediately below in brackets. The translation is cached so it only runs once per publication.
●Hyphenated patent numbers now resolve in search. Japanese application numbers in the official year-hyphen-serial format (for example JP2023-576177) were not returning typeahead suggestions. They now search correctly.
●WO entries past the national-phase deadline no longer show a misleading date. The status label for a PCT application whose 30-month national-phase window has closed previously showed the application's filing date below "International Expired" as if it were an expiry date. That date is now suppressed. When an application was explicitly withdrawn, the withdrawal date continues to show.
●Korean citations in different styles now appear as one entry in Documents Cited. The same Korean publication can appear in an examination report in the official Korean style or in the international registry style, which differ in their number format. Both writings now collapse to a single row in the Documents Cited table.
●Examination rounds with no remaining objections now appear in the prosecution grid. An examination report where the examiner found no remaining grounds — for example an Australian pre-acceptance report or a clean PCT Chapter I evaluation — previously disappeared from the prosecution grid because it had no objection data to display. It now appears as an explicit "No objections raised" column in the correct chronological position, so you can see the full prosecution timeline without gaps.
●The dossier link for Australian applications now opens the current AusPat search page. The previous link target had been retired by IP Australia and was returning a page-not-found error. The updated link opens directly in AusPat's patent search interface.
●Non-Latin-script titles and applicant names now show their English translation on the same line. Previously the translation appeared on a separate line below the original. It now sits inline in brackets immediately after the original text, keeping the header compact.
●WO/PCT Chapter I examination content is now more reliable. For some PCT Chapter I evaluations, the prosecution grid and Documents Cited table were showing a cover-page summary rather than the examiner's actual reasoning and cited documents. They now show the substantive report content — what the examiner actually wrote.
●The family diagram now re-centres reliably when you switch to the Diagram tab. Opening the diagram from the segmented control, navigating directly to a diagram URL, or using keyboard navigation could previously leave the diagram offset or zoomed oddly. It now refits to show the full tree every time the tab becomes visible.

2026-05-11

Small UX fixes

The family diagram now refits to the full tree whenever you switch to the Diagram tab, not just on the first load. Previously it would stay zoomed or offset from a previous layout if you switched tabs and came back.

On mobile, the family-page breadcrumb no longer disappears behind the navigation menu — there is now a clear zone between the menu button and the breadcrumb text so both are readable at once.

Every dialog (search, terms, PCT deadline list, full-report view) now has a slightly more transparent backdrop in light mode and a slightly denser one in dark mode, and no blur effect. The content behind stays readable; the modal still has clear visual focus.

2026-05-09

Scatter on a phone, properly

A pass through the whole app at iPhone-SE width tightened the parts that didn't quite fit. The marketing nav now has a hamburger menu so phone users can actually reach Roadmap, Changelog, About, and Terms. The breadcrumb on a family page no longer truncates to ellipsis — on small screens it shows just "App. {number}" instead of trying to fit "Family of App. … · Pub. …" alongside the pin and share buttons. The Prosecution / Claims / History tabs in the side panel got bigger tap targets. The PCT national-phase deadlines modal now scrolls correctly inside its own box (it was overflowing past the dialog at certain heights), and every office in the list now shows its country name — Antigua and Barbuda, Cabo Verde, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and 60-odd others used to render as bare codes.

A few smaller refinements: the date input in the missing-date prompt fills the full width on mobile instead of stacking next to a 160-px application-number column, the About page stats band wraps to a single column, and the search box on the landing hero shrinks its submit button to just an arrow on narrow screens so the placeholder text doesn't collide with it.

2026-05-08

translate non-English objections to English on demand

Prosecution

When an examination report comes in German, French, Spanish, or another non-English language, the side panel for each objection now offers a Translate to English button. Click it and you get a clean, patent-attorney-register translation alongside the original — article references, claim numbers, and cited document numbers preserved verbatim. The translation is cached after the first click, so each translated objection costs nothing on subsequent reads.

The translation stays visible if you close and reopen the side panel within the session. We've also tightened the prosecution grid so cover communications without substantive content (a common pattern in EP Art 94(3) prosecution that defers to the search opinion) no longer take up an empty column — rounds compact left-to-right and the column you see is "this application's first / second / third substantive examiner output."

A bunch of citation links that previously didn't resolve to Google Patents now do: EP citations in EPO format like EP-A-0 713 967, EP citations missing their leading zero pad like EP-A-233461, and Japanese Showa-era citations like JP 60 256555 A (which Google indexes with a JPS prefix). Family priority claims like 07 113356.5 echoed by Brazilian and Chinese members no longer get inferred as a separate provisional with a bogus "07" office code — the Family Diagram and member count are accurate again.

automatic PCT prosecution extraction

ProsecutionData

WO/PCT family members now populate prosecution rounds automatically when you open a family that contains them. The International Preliminary Report and any examiner-issued international-phase reports appear on the WO row alongside the rest of the prosecution timeline, no upload needed.

In families with multiple PCT applications, each WO row carries its own timeline rather than collapsing them together — useful when a portfolio has divisional-style or continuation-style PCT filings.

automatic EP examination report extraction

ProsecutionData

Open a family with European applications and the prosecution rounds now populate automatically — no upload required. EP examination communications, search opinions, and annexes appear in the round grid the moment the family loads, alongside US and Australian reports.

Works across all three EPO procedural languages (German, French, English) — examiner-issued documents are processed in their native language and tagged with universal objection types (Novelty, Inventive Step, Clarity, Support…) so you can scan across jurisdictions without re-learning vocabulary. Re-opening a family is free: already-extracted reports are skipped.

EP applications that came via PCT and proceeded to grant without a substantive EP communication will appear without extracted rounds for now — the underlying international-phase opinions surface on the WO row instead.

2026-05-07 — evening (very recent applications now load)

When a brand-new patent application appears in search but its full family record hasn't been built yet (typical for filings published in the last few days), the family page used to show "No patent family found" — even though the application itself was perfectly retrievable. Now the page renders a single-member family for these cases, so you see the application you searched for instead of an error. The wider family will show up automatically once its family record becomes available (usually within a few days of publication).

2026-05-07 — afternoon (PCT jurisdictions modal + responsive polish)

Click any PCT row's deadline for the full jurisdiction list

Data

The 30-month national-phase deadline shown on PCT rows is a useful default, but every attorney knows the real picture is jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction. Click the date now and a modal opens with the complete list grouped by deadline (30 months default, 31 months including AU and EP, plus a few outliers like Bosnia at 34 months). Offices that allow late entry on payment of a fee — Canada, China, the Philippines, Türkiye — are tagged with a + FEE badge inline.

The list is sourced from the WIPO PCT Applicant's Guide and date-stamped in the modal. Behind the scenes Scatter checks weekly for changes to the WIPO data and surfaces anything that has shifted, so the list stays current without manual maintenance.

Better visual cues for tooltipped data

Tooltipped Term-column dates (PCT 30m, US Patent Term Adjustment, EP Supplementary Protection Certificates) now have a small info icon next to them — much more obvious than the previous dotted underline. Same icon appears next to the Term column header so you know there's a longer explanation available without having to hover.

Mobile and laptop layout fixes

●The header on the family page no longer squishes the view switcher (Table / Diagram / Prosecution) on narrower viewports. It now stacks cleanly into two rows below laptop width.
●The diagram legend on phones now opens from a small "Legend" button instead of always covering the top-right corner.
●The onboarding tour card resizes properly on small phones.
●The landing page demo surfaces resize cleanly on tablet and phone widths.

2026-05-07 (PCT lifecycle: status, deadline, diagram)

PCT applications now show the right thing

PCT (WO) applications follow a different lifecycle from national patents — they never grant in the international phase, and the only deadline that matters is the 30-month window for entering national phase. The status badge and the Term column now reflect that.

●Status: PCT rows show "International" (green) while the 30-month national-phase window is open, and "International expired" (red) once it has closed (either past 30 months from priority, or because the applicant explicitly withdrew the PCT).
●Term column: PCT rows used to show nothing in the Term column. They now show the 30-month national-phase entry deadline, calculated from the earliest priority (or the international filing date if no priority is claimed). Hovering the date explains the deadline and notes that many jurisdictions — including AU and EP — accept 31 months, with a few accepting 32.

Family diagram badges now match the table

Family

In some families the diagram showed a PCT as "International" (green) while the table correctly showed it as "International expired" (red). The two surfaces now agree.

2026-05-06 (Australian prosecution retrieval + status accuracy fix)

Prosecution analysis now available for Australian applications

Prosecution

You can now retrieve and extract examination reports directly from the IP Australia public file wrapper for AU applications. The "Retrieve from AusPat" button works the same way as "Retrieve from USPTO" does for US applications — examination reports are downloaded, the objections and cited documents are extracted, and the prosecution round grid populates.

Coverage: standard patent applications where IP Australia has made the examination file wrapper public. If no examination reports are found, the panel says so rather than showing an error.

Status accuracy fix for lapsed AU applications

Status

Some Australian applications that lapsed by failing to pay the acceptance fee were incorrectly showing as Granted. The status display is now correct for these applications.

If you loaded an AU family before this fix and saw a member as Granted that should be Lapsed, re-loading the family will show the corrected status.

Status accuracy improves over time

Status

Status detection now improves automatically as new legal-event signals are encountered across families. National offices use a long tail of office-specific event types; previously, signals outside our coverage could leave a member showing the wrong status. The system now learns from each new signal it sees, so the second time a family containing that signal is loaded the status is correct.

2026-05-06 (faster loading for large patent families)

Searches on big families are now faster

SearchPerf

Loading a patent family with many members (Gleevec, sildenafil, and similarly crowded families typically have 50-150+ members) now completes in roughly half the time, with no loss of detail.

2026-05-05 (cross-office status accuracy + many small polish fixes)

Status detection now covers many more offices

Status

●Brazil patents now correctly display as granted when their legal events show issuance (previously stuck on "Filed").
●Mexican patents with "CONCESION" events now display as granted.
●Israeli patents with "PATENT GRANTED" events now display as granted.
●16 new offices have legal-event coverage added: BR, CS, CZ, DK, ES, FI, HU, IE, IL, MX, NO, NZ, PT, RU, SK, TW. If you load a family with members in any of these, the status column should now reflect grant / expired / discontinued correctly.
●Existing offices (AU, CN, DE, EP, JP, KR, US) gained additional codes too — e.g. JP yakuji-rei extension events are now recognised, US PTE-granted events are now recognised.

Status block always shows a date

Status

●Older families used to show a status block with no date underneath when grant was inferred without a dated grant event in the records. The status block now displays the publication date for granted patents, or the filing date for filed/pending applications.

Application numbers no longer show a stray ".A" suffix

●For older non-EP patents, application numbers used to show as e.g. "AU3569493.A" — the trailing ".A" was a stray suffix being incorrectly appended. Now displays cleanly as "AU3569493".

Search input now handles dots

●Searching for an EP application number with its check digit (e.g. "EP93810219.1") used to produce "No patent family found" because the dot was being stripped before the lookup. Now resolves correctly.

Status sorting

Status

●Sorting the family table by Status used to collapse rows with no explicit legal-event status text to one end of the list. Now sorts by the resolved status (active / pending / inactive) so all granted patents group together regardless of whether their status came from a legal event or kind-code inference.

Header tooltip + capitalisation

●Term column header tooltip refreshed to reflect what's actually applied (PTA + TD for US members; SPC details in row tooltip for European pharma; not yet for US PTE / AU s.70 / JP / KR extensions).
●Sortable column headers (Office, Application, Status, Title) now match the all-caps styling of the non-sortable headers.

History view colour coding

●History timeline events are now coloured per-office. A code that's "granted" in one office but a different category in another no longer gets the wrong colour — the event's own country tag drives the colour now.

PDF diagram node text

FamilyData

●Patent family diagram exports as PDF now fit text within the node boxes for large families. Previously the row spacing was generous enough that text could overflow when many members had to be packed onto a page.

Bug fixes you might have hit

●"Refused" EP applications now correctly classify as lapsed.
●Pre-2001 US grants (for example US6093011) now correctly classify as granted.
●"(EXPECTED) GRANT OF PATENT" placeholder strings on EP applications no longer count as actual grants.

2026-05-04 (patent term improvements + older family fixes)

US Patent Term Adjustment now applied

Status

●The Term column on US members now includes Patent Term Adjustment (the days the USPTO awards to compensate for prosecution delay). Continuations and divisionals get the right answer too — adjustments apply on top of the term-clock anchor from the parent filing.
●Where a continuation has a terminal disclaimer, the term is correctly capped at the parent's expiry. The Term column shows the capped date and a tooltip explains why.
●Adjusted dates have a dotted underline in the column. Hover for the breakdown.

Per-country SPC information

●The Term column tooltip now shows Supplementary Protection Certificate (SPC) details for European pharma families. Lists each EU member state with its product name, SPC status (filed / granted / expired), and expiry date where the data is available.
●The column itself still shows the base 20-year term — exact SPC dates vary by country, so showing one country's date as the row's primary value would be misleading.

Older families now show full data

●Patents from the 1990s (and other older non-EP applications) used to display with empty Term, blank titles, and missing priorities for many family members. Three data-source quirks were compounding to silently lose this data — all three are now fixed.
●Real example: searching for the imatinib (Gleevec) family — 22 members, all show their correct filing dates, all show priorities, all but two show titles (those two genuinely have no title in the upstream data).

Status corrections

Status

●"APPLICATION REFUSED" applications now correctly show as lapsed (previously shown as "filed" — over-optimistic).
●EP placeholder strings like "(EXPECTED) GRANT OF PATENT" and "INFORMATION ON THE STATUS OF AN EP PATENT APPLICATION" no longer match as granted (these are EP biblio metadata, not actual grant events).
●Pre-2001 US grants (older 7-digit patent numbers) now correctly show as granted instead of misclassified.

PCT term suppressed

Status

●WO/PCT rows no longer show a 20-year expiry date. PCT applications never grant — they have no enforceable term.

Tooltip styling

●All tooltips across the app now use the styled component for visual consistency (dark mode support, hover delay, multi-line layout). New regressions of inconsistent native browser tooltips are prevented at lint time.

2026-04-29 (bug fixes)

Documents Cited fixes

Prosecution

●"US Patent N" references now produce working Google Patents links. Previously, only the form "US Patent No. N" was recognised; bare "US Patent 6,157,917" was rendered as plain text.
●Case-law citations (e.g. *Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International*) extracted from §101 / eligibility rejections are now correctly excluded from the Documents Cited table. They are legal precedent, not prior art. If you have stored data showing a case-law row, clearing data for the affected application and re-fetching will remove it.

Prosecution row prompt

Prosecution

●After a failed "Retrieve from USPTO" attempt (e.g. the application is too old for the USPTO API), the round columns now show "Upload an examination report PDF to begin." — previously they went blank, leaving you with no clear next step.

2026-04-28 (family identity + data quality)

One URL per family, no matter how you searched

FamilySearch

●Searching by publication number or application number now lands on the same canonical URL. Bookmarks, shared links, and browser history all point to one place.
●Recent searches collapse to a single entry per family, regardless of which identifier you used to find it.
●The breadcrumb shows both identifiers: "Family of App. EP99203729 · Pub. EP1000000B1".

Correct application-number formatting

●Older US patents that previously showed with a garbled application number (such as "20/685,698") now display correctly as "09/206,856" — the actual series and serial number as filed.
●EP application numbers now include their check digit ("EP99203729.1"), computed via EPO's standard algorithm when the data source doesn't return it directly.

Older EP families now show titles and priorities

●Families that previously appeared with blank title and no priority dates now populate correctly, even where the underlying records came back incomplete.

Office code tooltips

●Hover any office pill (US, EP, AU, ...) for the full office name.

Dead patent links removed silently

●Citation links that lead to a 404 on Google Patents (common for utility models and obscure jurisdictions) now disappear automatically after a background check, so you never click into a broken page.

Command palette improvements

●Search suggestions appear first, then recents, then commands — in the order that reflects how you actually use it.
●Commands ("Pin this family", "Toggle theme", "Show shortcuts") are now searchable: type the command name to find it instead of having it clutter the list while you're searching for a patent.

Bigger social preview

●The preview card when sharing a Scatter link on Slack, Facebook, or iMessage is now significantly larger and easier to read.

2026-04-28 (prosecution polish)

Background prosecution loading for the whole family

ProsecutionFamilyPerf

●US prosecution data now loads for the whole family automatically in the background, including granted, lapsed, and expired applications — not just pending ones.
●Each application shows a progress bar while its office actions are being downloaded and analysed, with stage labels so you can see exactly what is happening.
●Navigation works during a fetch: switching to another view or back again does not cancel the work in progress.

Accurate citation lists

Prosecution

●Court decisions and case law citations (such as "In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428") are no longer stored as prior art references.
●Citations cited only in double-patenting objections are kept off the Documents Cited summary table — they appear in the objection card where they belong, but do not pollute the prior-art reference list.
●Patent reference links now resolve correctly for verbose USPTO citation forms ("U.S. Patent No. 6,272,456", "US Patent Application Publication No. 2005/0027699") and EP citations with internal spaces ("EP 1 821 462 A1").

Reports no longer re-analysed on every load

Perf

●Fixed a bug where US applications that had already been analysed would be re-processed every time you opened the family. Reports already extracted are now correctly recognised and left as they are.

2026-04-28

Smart search

●Search by patent number, applicant, or title — suggestions appear as you type, both on the public home page and in the Cmd+K palette inside the app. Enter picks the top match; arrow keys navigate the list.

Cleaner public site

●About, Changelog, and Terms pages unified under consistent marketing navigation and footer. Same look whether you arrive from the landing page or a direct link.
●New update pill on the home screen surfaces the latest changelog entry with a direct link.

Smarter search ordering

●Typing a publication number in the search bar now lists that publication first instead of burying it under unrelated applications that happen to share the same digit prefix.

Application-number focus across the app

●Pinned families and recent searches in the sidebar, home page and Cmd+K palette now show the canonical application number as the primary label, regardless of what you originally typed.
●The breadcrumb on a family page updates to the application number once the family loads — so bookmarks and shared links always reference a consistent identifier.
●The family overview header shows both the application number and the primary publication number side by side.
●Typeahead suggestions show both numbers labelled with App. and Pub. so it's clear which one matched your search.

Family titles in Pinned and Recent

Family

●Pinned and Recent items now show the family title underneath the application number — easier to recognise a matter at a glance. Hover to see the full title in a tooltip.

Cleaner download filenames

PerfData

●Excel and PDF exports now use the canonical application number with today's date in the filename — works on every operating system and sorts predictably.

Lighter social link previews

●When you share a Scatter link on Slack, iMessage, Discord or anywhere else, the preview image now uses the same cream background as the public site instead of dark slate.

Tour polish

Onboarding

●The onboarding tour highlight now lands on the correct element immediately when stepping forward or back, instead of lagging a moment behind the card text.

2026-04-27

Cleaner landing experience

●Reworked the public home page with a clearer story of what Scatter does and where it's heading. Sharper navigation, alternating product surfaces, AU/EP/US-anchored examples throughout. Better link previews when shared on Slack, X, iMessage and Discord.

2026-04-26

Better dates on examination reports

Prosecution

●When you upload an examination report as a PDF, Scatter now extracts mailing dates more reliably across the whole document, infers chronological vs reverse-chronological ordering automatically, and prompts you to fill in any missing dates with a quick form. Round numbering updates as soon as you save.

Fewer duplicate citations

Prosecution

●When an examination report references the same document under more than one publication number (for example a WO publication paired with its national-phase translation), Scatter now keeps both forms together cleanly in the Documents Cited list, with each linked separately.

2026-04-25

Prosecution grid polish

Prosecution

●Sticky column headers when scrolling the round grid. Cleaner layout for the application column — office, status, dates and actions all read top-down without awkward wrapping. Side-panel tabs slide their underline between tabs instead of jumping.

2026-04-23

Prosecution round grid — full overhaul

Prosecution

●Each objection now reads as a coloured card. Claim ranges collapse cleanly (cl. 1-4, 7), citation chips show a reasoning excerpt on hover, and clicking a card opens a side panel with every objection in that round. Universal objection types (Novelty, Inventive step, Sufficiency, Clarity, Support) used consistently across AU, EP, and US — no jurisdiction-specific section numbers in the UI.

Resizeable side panels

●Drag the left edge of the prosecution or claims side panel to set your preferred width. Setting persists across sessions.

2026-04-21

Smoother keyboard navigation and accessibility

A11y

●Tab bars (view switcher, side panel tabs, claims publication tabs) now support arrow-key navigation with proper focus management. Mobile sidebar drawer slides cleanly with focus trapping. Scrollbars across the app match the theme.

2026-04-20

Pinned families

●Star a family from the page header to keep it pinned on the home page and in the sidebar. Pinned families persist across browser sessions, so your active matters stay one click away.

First-run onboarding tour

Onboarding

●New users see a short coach-mark tour on the family page (view switcher, filters, pin, download, search). View-aware: the diagram and prosecution views each get their own short tour. Replay any time from the command palette.

Shareable URLs

●Filter selections, sort order, and active view (Table / Diagram / Prosecution) now live in the URL. Click Share and the link reproduces your exact state — useful for sending a colleague straight to the right view.

Unified Open side panel

●Per-row History, Claims, and Analyse buttons collapsed into a single Open button. Clicking it launches a side panel with three tabs: Prosecution, Claims, and History — switch between them without losing your place.

Inline claims viewer

●A new Claims tab in the side panel pulls the published claims for any family member straight from EPO. Multi-publication tabs let you toggle between A1, A2, B1 etc. for the same application.

Command palette enhancements

●Cmd+K (Ctrl+K) now does more than search: toggle dark mode, jump home, view changelog or shortcuts, clear recent searches, pin or unpin the current family. Arrow keys wrap around the list.

Loading and feedback polish

PerfData

●Family fetches now show stage-aware messages ("Searching INPADOC...", "Still searching, large families take a moment...", "EPO OPS is slow right now, hang tight..."). Recent searches and examples spin a small icon while loading instead of swapping to plain text. Export buttons show progress while running. Share button confirms with a check icon and "Link copied" label.

Tooltips on icon-only buttons

●Hover any icon button (filter, export, theme toggle, sidebar collapse) to see what it does. Each carries a screen-reader label too.

Empty states across views

●When filters yield no matches in any view (Table / Diagram / Prosecution), you see a friendly empty state with a one-click Reset button instead of a blank canvas.

Animations and visual polish

●Filter bar slides open and closed instead of appearing instantly. Active view tab uses a sliding pill animation. Sort indicators rotate smoothly when toggling direction. Focus rings now visible across all interactive elements in light and dark mode.

Better error handling

●Family fetches give up after 40 seconds and show a clear "Try again" UI with a tailored message (timeout vs network vs server error). Prosecution extraction has a 90-second timeout with the same pattern. App-wide error boundaries mean a render error in one panel no longer crashes the whole page.

Status taxonomy unified

Status

●The seven status types (granted, expired, revoked, lapsed, examination, filed, provisional) now use the same colours and labels everywhere — table badges, diagram nodes, dashboard bar, Excel exports. Dark-mode contrast pass to make sure every pairing meets WCAG AA.

Microcopy sweep

●Consistent "Download" verb across export buttons. Em dashes removed from in-app copy where natural punctuation read better. Universal terminology throughout — Novelty, Inventive step, Sufficiency, Clarity rather than jurisdiction-specific section numbers.

2026-04-19

Header and dashboard restructure

●View switcher (Table / Diagram / Prosecution) moved into the page header as a centred segmented control. Filter funnel and export buttons consolidated into the dashboard's title row, saving a row of vertical space.

Filter bar polish

●Filter pills restyled for a cleaner look in both light and dark mode.

Table cleanup

Family

●Removed redundant Copy and chevron icons from the family table — click-to-expand still works.

Status badges include date inline

Status

●Legal-status date now sits inside the status badge instead of as a separate column value.

2026-04-16

Major UI overhaul

●New collapsible sidebar with logo, search trigger, navigation, recent searches, theme toggle, and feedback widget.
●Cmd+K (Ctrl+K) command palette: search recent history, with arrow-key navigation and loading feedback.
●New app home page tailored for returning users.
●Responsive table: card layout on mobile, fixed-percentage columns on desktop. Status text wraps; long titles truncate with click-to-expand.
●Keyboard shortcuts overlay (press ? anywhere).
●404 page, error boundary, dynamic OpenGraph link previews per family.
●Terms and privacy page added.
●Print stylesheet — clean printouts of any family page.
●Dark-mode-aware toasts.

2026-04-14

Family tree diagram polish

Family

●Hub co-parent centring: when one parent feeds multiple branches (e.g. a continuation hub with a provisional and a divisional), the hub now sits centred between its co-parents.
●Arrowheads now visible on edges into junction nodes for clearer flow direction.
●Feedback widget gained a dark-mode treatment.

2026-04-10

Cleaner family tree diagrams

Family

●Multi-parent children (e.g. continuations of two priorities) now route through a small junction node, producing cleaner orthogonal arrows and tighter spacing.
●All child nodes (PCT included) now show arrowheads.
●Diagram zoom controls and minimap match the slate dark mode of the rest of the app.

2026-04-09

Earlier access to dossier links

●Dossier links (EP Register, USPTO File Wrapper, IP Australia AusPat, WIPO Patentscope) now appear alongside the upload and retrieve buttons before any extraction is triggered — useful when you want the official source first.

Prosecution tab empty state

Prosecution

●Empty prosecution panels now explain how to populate them (upload a PDF or use Retrieve from USPTO).

About page polish

●Tagline cleanup; AI framing aligned with the rest of the site (Scatter extracts; the attorney decides).

2026-04-08

Prosecution spreadsheet export — much better

ProsecutionUI

●Export now produces a layout that mirrors the on-screen prosecution table: one column per round, one row per objection, with round labels matching "First Report / Action" etc. Objection types are bold; citation labels are live hyperlinks straight to the patent office or NPL source. Filename is now prosecution-{application number}.xlsx.

Live links for non-patent literature

●NPL citations now link out: DOI lookup tried first, then arXiv, then a Google Scholar search as a fallback.

Inline expand for objection text

Prosecution

●Click any objection in the round grid to expand the full objection text in place. When the original report text was captured, a "View full report" link opens the complete examination report in a modal.

Smoother family page navigation

Family

●The brief blank flash between clicking a result and the family page rendering is gone — the layout stays in place while data loads.

2026-04-07 (session 2)

PDF upload and US retrieve directly on the prosecution tab

ProsecutionPerfData

●Each row in the prosecution tab now has its own "Choose PDF" and "Retrieve from USPTO" buttons. No need to bounce back to the family table to upload an exam report.
●"Retrieve" relabelled "Retrieve from USPTO" with a download icon and hidden for non-US offices (which need PDF upload instead).

2026-04-07

Cleaner citation storage

Prosecution

●The Documents Cited summary now always shows the canonical set of cited documents, deduplicated across the whole family.

Scanned PDFs supported

●Examination reports that come through as scanned images (no embedded text) are now processed automatically. Upload works the same way; the system handles scanned PDFs without any extra steps.

Better EP report splitting

●EP examination reports are now split into separate rounds more reliably, even when the date field on the page is blank or in a non-standard format. Common DD.MM.YYYY page-header dates are also recognised for mailing date extraction.

Family export upgrade

Family

●Family Excel export now has status colours filled into the status column matching the on-screen badges. The application you searched for is bolded.

Upload validation

StatusPerf

●Uploading a PDF now checks the file actually contains the application number for the row it's being uploaded against, preventing wrong-document mistakes.

2026-04-02

Prosecution tab improvements

Prosecution

●Objections without prior art citations (Clarity, Support etc.) now show in round cards with their objection text instead of being hidden.
●Documents Cited list now respects the office filter on the family.
●Prosecution tab auto-populates from previously stored data without needing to click Retrieve.
●"Clear all data" properly clears both the database and the in-memory cache.
●Citations are deduplicated within and across rounds at write time, so the Documents Cited list never shows dupes.

Citation display polish

Prosecution

●NPL references truncated to 60 characters in tables with full text on hover. Patent and NPL citations sorted alphanumerically by label. Smart quotes normalised to straight quotes so "Smith et al." and "Smith et al." don't appear as two separate rows.

Excel export from both tabs

●Both the family Table tab and the Prosecution tab have an Export button. Prosecution export produces two sheets: Documents Cited and Prosecution Grid.

Share button moved

●Share button moved into the results page header so it's clear it shares the page URL, not a specific tab.

2026-04-01

Multi-report PDF upload

PerfData

●Upload a PDF containing multiple examination reports (e.g. an AU first and second report combined) and Scatter splits them into separate "First Report / Action" and "Second Report / Action" columns automatically. Round numbers are assigned by mailing date, so uploading a later report first still orders correctly.

Round column labels

Prosecution

●Round columns now read "First / Second / Third / ... Report / Action" instead of "Round N".

Bulk clear

●"Clear all data" button removes all stored prosecution data for the family in one click.

Auto-updating "Latest update" card

●The "Latest update" card on the public home page now pulls from the live changelog at build time.

2026-03-31 (session 2)

More accurate citation extraction

ProsecutionData

●Primary references identified only by author shorthand (e.g. "Nishio") were previously dropped. They are now recovered and shown in the right objection card.
●Tuned the AI extraction backend for better speed and accuracy on prosecution documents.

Real progress bar

●The loading bar during prosecution analysis now shows actual stage progress: fetching documents → downloading → segmenting objections → extracting citations (e.g. "2 of 4 objections"). Replaces the previous indeterminate spinner.

Confidence indicators

●Citations with no source excerpt (or a very short one) get an amber indicator with a tooltip explaining it may be an extraction error — easier to scan for review.

2026-03-31

Citation tracking across the family

ProsecutionFamily

●Prior art citations from any prosecution analysis now save automatically. A new Citations tab shows every reference cited across the family — applications it was cited in, type (patent / NPL), and how many times. References are normalised on ingest so "US 8,123,456 B2" and "US8123456B2" don't appear as two separate records.

Multiple panels open at once

●Open a prosecution panel for one row, then open another for a different row, and they stay independent. Each has its own close button.

2026-03-29

Prosecution intelligence shipped (Phase 2)

Prosecution

●US office actions are now retrieved automatically — Scatter pulls the full text and runs the extraction without any upload step.
●AI reads each office action and pulls out the prior art citations relied on in rejections, with reference label (D1, D2, "Smith"…), document ID, objection type (Novelty, Inventive step, etc.), and claims affected.
●Direct download links to the original office action PDFs from the USPTO file wrapper, accessible alongside the extracted summary.

Upload-based analysis (any office)

Perf

●Upload an examination report PDF for AU, EP, WO or any other office where automatic retrieval isn't available, and Scatter runs the same extraction.

Clickable links to cited prior art

Prosecution

●Every cited patent document is a clickable link straight to Google Patents.

Office-specific dossier link labels

●File Wrapper (US), EP Register (EP), AusPat (AU), Patentscope (WO) — each office's dossier link now uses the proper local name.

Changelog created

●This is where new builds get logged from now on. The home page surfaces the latest entry with a direct link.

Earlier sessions

Phase 1 — Patent family explorer

Family

●Search by application or publication number to fetch the full patent family.
●Family table with seven status badges (granted, expired, revoked, lapsed, examination, filed, provisional). Provisional applications inferred from priority chain analysis.
●Multi-select filters for office and status.
●Family tree diagram with landscape and portrait layouts and vector PDF export.
●Dark mode.
●CSV export.
●Global Dossier links for IP5 offices and beyond.
●Deep links into Espacenet, eDossier, AusPat.

What's shipped.

Confirm your email when you sign in with Microsoft

Watchlist emails for Microsoft sign-ins

Prosecution grid: an international preliminary examination report is one column

Spreadsheet export: the Prosecution sheet lines up with the screen

Prosecution grid: a PCT row no longer picks up a later international application's reports

Documents Cited: a reference written with a dash before its number now links

The home page now names every office whose examination reports arrive automatically

Uploaded examination reports are no longer labelled in US terms

Family diagram: one provisional for each priority application

Documents cited: a document no longer carries another document's examiner number

Prosecution grid: PCT demand filings named as the demand

Prosecution grid: a report whose objections could not be extracted says so

Family search: a busy patent office no longer turns a family into one member

Search: Brazilian and Japanese numbers typed as the office prints them

Prosecution grid: Brazilian preliminary requirements show their objections

Prosecution grid: a report nobody read never shows as having no objections

Prosecution grid: objection names in US wording, if you prefer them

Prosecution grid: earlier European replies gain the document they were missing

Terms & Privacy: both sources of cited-document PDFs are listed

Prosecution grid: one upload button for the whole family

Prosecution grid: fuller applicant replies on European applications

Family pages: an invitation to sign in

Search: Australian applications that are filed but not yet published

Prosecution grid: non-US objections no longer carry the US-only "Restriction / election" name

Prosecution grid: US Ex Parte Quayle actions appear as rounds

Emails name the company behind Scatter

Terms & Privacy page brought up to date

Status labels name one event

Watchlist: the email box says when an address cannot receive email

Prosecution grid: replies in the Other column read in full

Prosecution on a phone: a card that is still loading says so

Cited documents: an old Japanese publication no longer borrows a modern patent's title

Older US applications show their own application number

Older US applications show their own status, attorney and prosecution

Cited documents: a misread number no longer borrows an unrelated patent's title

Claims read in English for European patents

An international application is named the same way everywhere

A family opened by its publication number no longer reloads itself

Search by a PCT application number

New Zealand members: a sealed patent reads as granted, and its file wrapper is found

Cited documents: a Brazilian check digit no longer splits one document into two

Cited documents: three more number shapes now open at Google Patents

Watch-list notifications for examination reports and responses are switched on

A Finnish first filing now appears in its own family

Cited documents: fewer duplicate rows and fewer dead links

Finnish examination reports are now retrieved

Cited US design patents now show their details

Applicant amendments retrieved only in part are no longer shown as complete

Family diagrams no longer sprout phantom "Provisional (inferred)" nodes

A prosecution row no longer sticks on "Starting…" when signed in

Upload sits where the next examination report would go

Grant dates on the status pill now read the most recent grant-stage entry

A second, free route to a cited document in English

Canadian examination reports

Download a prosecution round as a package

Search suggestions highlight your match; more cited documents resolve

A cited document with no findable details says so

Design applications get their disclosure records back

A microfilm citation shows its publication number

Cited-document details now appear as you view, not overnight

Documents Cited shows one row per document

More cited documents carry their details, and form debris is gone

An examiner's letterhead no longer appears as a cited document

More cited documents show their title and applicant

Documents cited only in a unity objection move to the search section

An international publication cited with a bare "A" now links

The examination-report panel's tab strip loses its stray scrollbar

The cited documents table is half the height

Documents cited by Japanese and Korean examiners now read as references

Japanese examination reports now display when you open an objection

The Prosecution tab's loading indicator is back on the corner

The sign-in page recognises you when you are already signed in

Extracted examination rounds could vanish from the prosecution page

Cited documents now show what they are

IDS Assist notes a family member already in the record

IDS Assist corrections

Smaller fixes

A cited document could be left out of Documents Cited

Documents an examiner found are no longer shown as applicant disclosures