PAIR - Patent Application Information Retrieval

There are manifold online resources for paralegal and litigation support professionals working in the intellectual property field. One of the most important is PAIR - the Patent Application Information Retrieval service provided by the USPTO, which allows for the review of prosecution histories of patents and patent applications. Public PAIR has publicly available information and Private PAIR has restricted information for pending applications.

PAIR makes available the following information:

1. Application Data - basic information including:

a. First named inventor

b. First named applicant

c. Status

d. Filing date

e. Examiner name

f. Patent number

2. A list of key events in the transaction history, including all email notifications, payment receipts, requests for extensions, and electronic reviews.

3. The Image File Wrapper which has PDFs of each document in the prosecution history.

4. Continuity Data - an applicant can make additional claims for an invention that was part of a previous patent.

5. Links to the Published Patent Documents.

6. A Patent Assignment Abstract of Title showing who the patent has been transferred to.

7. The last tab, Display References, has links to prior art - information relevant to a patent's claims of originality.