ClaimMaster lets you to quickly compare claim amendments in the IFW file history downloaded from the Patent Center. This tool can be very helpful when you are trying to determine how the claims have changed during prosecution of a particular patent, such as when analyzing the issued patent during or in preparation of litigation.
To identify any differences between incremental claim amendments in file history using ClaimMaster, perform the following steps:
- Navigate to Patent Center
Open Patent Center in any browser, lookup the desired patent or publication by the application, publication, or patent #. Then navigate to the Documents and Transactions tab
- Download XML documents from Patent Center
In the Documents and Transaction tab, select all claims in the file wrapper that you want to compare. You can just select all items in the IFW section and click to download XML documents only, as shown below. You’ll probably be warned that not all selected items are available in XML, but you can ignore this warning. After you select XML option from the dropdown, your browser will download a zip archive to some default location, typically “Downloads”.
- Launch Claim Compare Tool
From the ClaimMaster tab, click on the Time-Saving Tools menu, then Compare Claims:
- Switch to Prosecution History tab
In the “Compare Claims” window, switch to the In Prosecution History tab – this is where you’ll be able to compare claim amendments.
- Select the downloaded IFW file and Compare Claim Amendments
Point ClaimMaster to the IFW archive you’ve previously downloaded from the Patent Center. ClaimMaster will automatically pull out only the claims documents from the archive, so you don’t need to worry about having additional documents in there. Once you specify the file, lick on Compare Claims button.
- Review the Comparison Result
Once ClaimMaster finishes processing and analyzing all claims documents in the IFW archive, it will bring up an HTML page showing comparison of claim amendments in the file wrapper. By default, differences between the very first and the very last set of filed claims will be shown, but you can also compare between any other amendments (sorted by date) by selecting from the dropdown menus for claim set #1 and claim set # 2. You can see a sample HTML comparison report here.
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For more information on these features, check out the Online Manual.