Equinox's PTO data comparison functionality is designed to run in the background, keeping an eye on updates to official office records so you don't have to worry about checking and amending everything manually.
Equinox gets its official office data from the following sources, using Questel APIs:
iOrbit for Patents. This contains data from 120 official offices globally.
Markify for Trade marks. This contains data from 240 official offices globally.
How the PTO functionality works
Once a week Equinox checks the official office data for all active patent and trade mark cases in your system. The table below shows when the updates happen:
Server Day of Week Server Time Zone Server Time US Monday America/Chicago 8pm Pacific Monday Australia/Brisbane 8pm Main Tuesday 10pm Canada Wednesday America/Toronto 8pm South East Asia Thursday Asia/Singapore 8pm It then compares the official office data with the data in your system. For information on which fields the PTO functionality covers, see our article on setting up PTO system preferences in Equinox.
Equinox highlights any differences it finds, and also lists which cases have no differences, or couldn't be matched
It then gives you the option to import the data suggestions from the office if your data on Equinox is wrong or missing
How Equinox matches cases
Equinox matches cases in your system to those recorded at PTO offices by following a set logic. It'll try to match data in this order:
Match on publication number
If no publication number then on grant number
If no grant number then on filing number
If Equinox doesn't find a match for any of these three fields, it'll list a case as not matched. In this scenario you can manually link the case yourself.
PTO Portfolio Comparisons
The PTO Portfolio Comparison Dashboard and Status Report give you an overview of whether or not PTO cases have been matched to cases in your Equinox system, and the status of any differences. See our article on PTO Portfolio Comparisons for more information on these pages.