Definition of Terms
Patentcloud’s SEP OmniLytics strives to bring our users the best quality data and analysis through an evidence-based approach to SEP data analysis.
The SEPs used in SEP OmniLytics and mentioned here refers to SEPs declared under 3GPP standards in the ETSI IPR declaration database and are all based on patent owners’ self-evaluation (with no verification from any 3rd party).
What is defined as a SEP declaration in SEP OmniLytics?
The true essentiality of a SEP has become an often-debated issue in litigation cases in recent years. In most cases, the common method of determining a SEP’s essentiality relies upon a constructed claim chart and expert reviews.
Therefore, in defining a SEP, SEP OmniLytics adopts SEP declarations from the ETSI database and uses the elements in a SEP declaration to set the following criteria:
- The SEP must include technical report/specification information.
All SEPs are inspected for (1) a 3GPP technical report/specification number and (2) whether the technical report/specification has been withdrawn by 3GPP or not. - The SEP must be a published patent application.
SEP OmniLytics only considers published patent applications. This is because only published applications can be scrutinized for essentiality. Therefore, provisional and withdrawn applications are not included in the scope. This deduction is taken from the hypothesis that a SEP owner will eventually declare a current provisional/withdrawn patent application in the future if they deem the patent to be a SEP. - A SEP family must include patents with an ETSI declaration number and only include their simple family members.
SEP OmniLytics uses the EPO DOCDB simple family definition of “... a collection of patent documents that are considered to cover a single invention.”
Why simple patent families? SEP OmniLytics uses simple families as the basic unit since a patent that consists of the same technical content as a declared SEP implies that the patent is also a SEP. In addition, a SEP’s essentiality which can be proven through a claim chart does not necessarily indicate that its family members can also be proven thuswise. This also applies to the indirect priority of the patents.
Therefore, only the simple family of a SEP is considered in each SEP disclosure and not INPADOC extended families (defined as "A collection of patent applications covering similar technical content"). In data adoption, all of the considerations listed here aim to retain data integrity and prevent fueling the over-declaration situation.