Downloading IFW Docs from PEDS

ClaimMaster provides a tool for batch downloading Image File Wrapper (IFW) documents and bibliographic data from the USPTO's PEDS service.  You can download full file histories, only specific types of documents (e.g., Office Action and corresponding applicant responses, IDSs, etc.). 


Getting Started

To launch the IFW document downloading tool, perform the following steps:


  • From the ClaimMaster Ribbon, click on the Downloading Tools menu, then select Download IFW Docs from PEDS:

 


Feature Options

The IFW Download window, which will come up, has the following options:



    1. Here you can specify the download source for your application/patent. 
    2. This is the section where you type in the patent/application/publication number(s).  You can specify one or more of patent #s, application #s, or publication #s as input, as long as the entries are separated by semicolons or spaces.  Once the downloading process finishes, the log of the results will be displayed in this area.
    3. This section specifies a document filter that will be used for selecting which IFW documents to download.  If set to "All documents", all IFW documents will be downloaded for a given patent/application.  Otherwise, only IFW documents of the specified type (e.g., Office Actions and Responses, Claims, IDS, etc.) will be downloaded.   You can specify custom filters if you click on the "Settings" button (item #7)
    4. By clicking on the "Settings" button, you can specify custom documents filters for IFW downloads.
    5. This section specifies a date filter that will be used for selecting which IFW documents to download.  If set to "All dates", all IFW documents will be downloaded for a given patent/application.  Otherwise, only IFW documents within the specified date range (e.g., last 6 months) will be downloaded.
    6. This table lists the files downloaded from PEDS in PDF format.
    7. In this tab, you can specify various settings for your download operations:


      1. Checking this box will sort the sub-documents by their earliest filing date in each downloaded file history 
      2. If this box is checked, ClaimMaster will OCR each downloaded document
      3. If this box is checked, ClaimMaster create a sub-directory for each specified patent/application in the Save directory (item 7)
      4. If this checkbox is selected, ClaimMaster will attempt (based on the bookmarks in the Office Action) to perform OCR only on the portions of the Office Action that include the substantive rejection and the art cited by the Examiner.  To save time, other portions of the document will not be OCRed (e.g., the listing of search terms used by the Examiner)
      5. You can specify a save directory where the downloaded documents to be saved when the process completes
      6. Here you can specify a custom file naming template for the downloaded files using replacement fields that will be replaced with the actual bibliographic/date information for each downloaded document.  For example, "[APPNUM]-[CUSTOMNUM]-[DATE]" or any other combination of the available fields.  Please take care not to use characters in your template that are forbidden by Windows in file paths, such as * " / \ [ ] : ; | ,.
    1. Select one or more of the files in table 11 and open/print/email them using buttons on the right. You can select multiple files by dragging the mouse across each row or using Shift/control keys + left click
    2. Press this button to start the download data from PEDS.