Changelog

What's shipped.

Session by session, tagged by area.

2026-07-01

Chinese applications now show the applicant's amended claims, with English on demand

●For Chinese applications, the prosecution timeline now shows the applicant's amended claims and description pages, paired to the examiner's report each one answered (and any amendments filed before examination). Because these are filed in Chinese, each document has a "Translate to English" button. One thing to note, flagged in the view itself: the applicant's written arguments are not available for Chinese applications, so only the amended pages are shown (unlike Japanese and Korean applications, which include the arguments). Very old Chinese applications may not have downloadable pages.

Japanese and Korean applications now show the applicant's replies

●For Japanese and Korean applications, the prosecution timeline now shows the applicant's replies to the examiner — their arguments and any amendments — alongside the examiner's reports, paired to the report each one answered. Voluntary amendments filed before examination are shown too. Where the office provides an English version of a reply, that is what you see.

PCT prosecution documents now shown in English where available

Prosecution

●When an international (PCT) application's written opinion or international preliminary report on patentability was issued in another language (for example, for an application filed in Japan, Korea, or China), the prosecution timeline now shows the official English translation of that document directly, instead of the original-language version. The round keeps its correct date, and the objections are read straight from the English text — so there's nothing to translate by hand. Documents that were already in English are unaffected.

More PCT Chapter II reports now appear in the prosecution timeline

Prosecution

●The international preliminary report on patentability (Chapter II) is now retrieved for more PCT applications. Some of these reports were previously missing from the timeline; they now appear alongside the written opinion, with their objections and cited documents.

More reliable retrieval of foreign and PCT examination reports

ProsecutionPerf

●When a family's prosecution data is loading and a records source has a brief hiccup, retrieval now retries automatically instead of showing "no reports found" for a member that actually has them. This reduces the cases where a report was temporarily missing and only appeared after a reload.

Clearer message when a foreign application's examination documents aren't yet retrievable

Prosecution

●For Japanese, Korean, and Chinese applications where the office has documents on file but hasn't yet organised them for automated retrieval, the prosecution view now says exactly that — and points you to view them directly or upload the report — instead of implying examination may not have begun. The old wording was misleading for applications that are already granted.

2026-06-26

Status shows while prosecution data is still loading

ProsecutionStatusPerf

●While a family's prosecution data is loading, each application being read shows a small spinner next to its status — signalling the status is provisional until loading finishes. The spinner appears in both the table and the diagram, sits beside the status so it stays readable, and clears automatically when loading completes.

2026-06-22

Chinese examination reports now appear for more applications

Prosecution

●More Chinese family members now show their examination reports in the prosecution timeline. Previously some Chinese applications showed no examination history even when reports were on file.

2026-06-21

Fuller PCT / international prosecution

Prosecution

●International (PCT) applications now retrieve their international examination documents directly — the written opinion of the International Searching Authority and the international preliminary report on patentability — and show them in the prosecution timeline. This populates the PCT view for more applications, and across more receiving offices, than before.

Search results now show the number you typed

●Typing a grant number to find an application (for example, entering a granted US patent number) now shows that number in the search result alongside the application, so it is clear the right record came back. Previously the result could display different numbers that didn't include the digits you typed.

Examination date reflects the report, not an unrelated event

Prosecution

●The date shown on the "Under examination" status badge now matches the latest retrieved examination report's mailing date. Previously it could show a later unrelated event date from the legal history (for example, an address-change entry), making the date inconsistent with the report label beside it.

JP/KR/CN: allowance notices no longer appear as examination reports

Prosecution

●Notices of allowance and grant decisions in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese applications are now filtered from the prosecution timeline. Previously a family that had reached the grant stage could show its allowance notice as a final "examination report" in the grid.

Japanese, Korean & Chinese examination reports

Prosecution

●Examination reports for Japanese, Korean, and Chinese family members are now retrieved automatically and shown in the prosecution timeline alongside the other jurisdictions. Non-English reports can be translated to English in place, the same as elsewhere.

Fuller European examination history

Prosecution

●For European applications, the prosecution view now captures the applicant's reply to a summons to oral proceedings (the written submissions and amended-claim/auxiliary-request sets filed in the run-up to a hearing), so the examiner's report no longer appears with nothing beneath it.
●It also now shows a refusal by the examining division, with its reasons, as its own step in the timeline.

2026-06-20

Keyboard access to objections

Prosecution

●Objection cards can now be reached and opened with the keyboard (Tab to a card, then Enter or Space). Opening an objection moves focus into the panel, and closing it returns focus to the card you came from, so the prosecution grid is navigable without a mouse.

Keyboard access to the member details panel

FamilyUI

●Opening a family member's details panel now moves focus into the panel, and closing it returns focus to the row you opened it from, so the details panel is reachable and dismissable without a mouse (matching the prosecution objection panel).

Clearer wait message when first opening an objection highlight

ProsecutionUI

●The first time you open an objection's highlight in a given report, preparing the document can take a few seconds. The wait message now reflects that ("Building document index…") instead of a generic "Locating passage…", so the brief pause reads as expected rather than stuck. Subsequent opens stay instant.

Every ground of an objection is now shown

Prosecution

●When an examiner raises several grounds of the same type in one round (for example, multiple inventive-step arguments against different claims), the opened objection now shows each ground in full — its claims, the documents it relies on, and its verbatim text — instead of only the first. The PDF highlights all of the grounds. The grid still groups them under one chip per type for scanning.

Clearer message when no examination reports are on file (Australian applications)

Prosecution

●For an Australian application that has lapsed, expired, or proceeded to grant, the prosecution view now says so when no examination reports were retrieved, instead of suggesting that examination might not have begun yet.

European oral-proceedings summons reads as one step

●When an EP summons to oral proceedings and its accompanying annex of objections share a date, the prosecution grid now shows them as a single "Summons to attend oral proceedings (with annex)" step, instead of a separate summons tag beneath the annex. Genuinely separate notes (such as a later consultation annex) still appear on their own.

Examination report highlighting now carries across page breaks

ProsecutionUI

●When you open an objection, the highlighted passage in the examination report now continues onto the next page when the objection runs across a page break — previously the highlight could stop at the bottom of the first page.

Objection highlighting shows the first time you open one

ProsecutionUI

●The first time you open an objection in a session, the report now scrolls straight to the highlighted passage and shows it, instead of only doing so when you opened an objection a second time.
●If a passage can't be pinpointed, the report still opens to read in full (a brief network hiccup no longer hides the document).

Family diagram: connector lines no longer cross an application box

Family

●On some families a connector line could run straight across an application box that sat between a parent and its national-phase filings. The connector now routes cleanly below the box, so every application stays readable. The same fix carries through to the exported PDF.

Portrait diagram: dragging an application now moves its connectors

Family

●In the portrait diagram, dragging an application box now carries its connector lines with it, so you can rearrange the layout and the relationships stay attached. (The landscape diagram already behaved this way.)

2026-06-19

Mobile family table: member titles stay on screen

Family

●On a phone, the family table's member cards no longer run off the right edge; each card now fits the screen, so titles and status are readable without sideways scrolling.
●Each member's title now sits on its own line within the card, so it isn't squeezed by the status badge. The full title is still one tap away when you expand a card.

Clearer family diagram on families with several provisional applications

Family

●On these families, boxes that used to sit on top of one another are now separated, so every application stays legible.
●Where several applications share the same children, they are ordered to keep the connector lines from crossing, making the relationships easier to follow.

Agent of record now appears reliably for European family members

FamilyPerf

●The agent of record, shown in a member's bibliographic details, now resolves reliably for European applications. A retrieval hiccup could previously leave it blank even when an agent was on record; it now recovers on the next view.

2026-06-18

Document ranges in examination reports now capture every cited document

Prosecution

●When an examiner relies on a range of cited documents (for example D2–D5), the objection now lists every document in the range (D2, D3, D4 and D5), not just the first and last. Previously the in-between documents could be missed.
●This applies to newly retrieved or uploaded examination reports; reports already in your view keep their current citations until refreshed.

IDS Assist recognises documents already covered by an earlier application in the chain

●For a US continuation or divisional, a family-cited document already on the file of an earlier application in the same chain — a parent, grandparent or further back (cited by that application's examiner, or submitted to it) — is now treated as already covered rather than flagged again, so the review list focuses on what is genuinely new to this application.
●The header notes how many were covered this way, and you can expand the list to see each of those documents and which earlier application it is of record in.

IDS Assist: more "First cited in" entries now show their date

Prosecution

●Where a document was cited under a combined reference (for example a PCT publication together with its US equivalent), the "First cited in" entry now resolves and shows when and where it was first cited.
●For documents carried by a European search report, the originating search report's date is now shown.

Searching a US application by its number is more reliable

SearchPerf

●Typing a US application number in the usual series/serial form (for example US17/106,694) now resolves the family reliably, including the most recent series.

Prosecution page no longer stretches too wide

Prosecution

●On families with many examination rounds, only the round grid now scrolls sideways on its own; the rest of the prosecution page, including IDS Assist and the documents table, stays within the window.
●The round grid's horizontal scrollbar now matches the rest of the app's styling instead of showing the browser's default bar.

IDS Assist covers applications allowed without examination reports

Prosecution

●A US application that was allowed without any examination reports still has its own list of cited documents, and IDS Assist now retrieves and checks it like any other — so it no longer gets stuck on a "checking the record…" indicator or appear with nothing to show.
●Concluded applications are still grouped together for reference; the group now shows a compact list of application numbers, and selecting one opens that application's reference details (its family-cited documents and where each appears) right there.

Office filter shows every jurisdiction

●The jurisdiction filter now shows every office in the family directly, instead of tucking a single office away behind a "more" dropdown when there was room to show it.

2026-06-17

Complete PCT national-phase deadline list

Data

●The list of PCT national-phase entry deadlines (opened from a PCT/WO row's deadline) now covers the full set of contracting states — 27 more jurisdictions than before, including Switzerland, Indonesia, Kenya, Serbia, Algeria, Iraq, North Macedonia and the OAPI regional office — each shown with its full country name.
●Azerbaijan's deadline was corrected to 30 months (it had previously shown the later figure).
●All entries were re-verified against the WIPO PCT Applicant's Guide. As always, confirm a deadline against the live WIPO data before relying on it.

IDS Assist now shows for every US application

●IDS Assist now appears for every US application in a family — including granted ones — and its content tells you whether there is anything to review, rather than the section only appearing when there were gaps.
●For an application still under examination, family-cited documents not yet in its record are flagged as candidates to review. For an application whose examination has concluded (for example, a granted patent), the same list is shown for reference only, with no review prompt, since no disclosure can be added to it.
●The "Cited in" column is now labelled "First cited in" — it shows where each document was first cited in each other family member.

IDS Assist: tidier "First cited in" column and a counterpart-citation timing note

Prosecution

●The "First cited in" column now shows just the single earliest family member that cited each document, with a "+N other members" control to reveal the rest. This keeps the column tidy when a document was cited against several members of the family.
●For a US application still under examination, where a document was first cited by a counterpart national or regional office, IDS Assist now notes that earliest citation (office, report and date) and that a certification window may apply. It is a prompt to check the file against the operative date, not a deadline we have calculated, and it states that the duty to disclose continues regardless.

New features now highlight themselves to returning users

●When a new feature ships, returning users now get a brief one-step highlight for just that feature the first time they encounter it, instead of having to replay the whole tour. (The IDS Assist panel is the first to use this.)

2026-06-16

IDS Assist: family-cited documents shown against your US application's own record

ProsecutionFamily

●Each US application in a family now has a single IDS Assist table listing every document cited against the other family members, with two columns: Cited in (which other member cited it, in what report and when, and the examiner's document label) and Disclosed to USPTO (whether it already appears in this application's own record, and how).
●A document not yet in the application's record is flagged in amber, "Not in this record · review for IDS", as a candidate to review for an Information Disclosure Statement. When every document is already of record, the header confirms it ("all N disclosed").
●The table is now clickable end to end: a Cited in entry opens the citing office's report (or jumps to that member), and a flagged document opens for review. This replaces the earlier pair of separate notes with one table that shows the gaps and the already-disclosed documents together.

IDS Assist entries now open — and cite — the source document

●The Cited in and USPTO record entries link to the source: a US examiner-cited or applicant-disclosed entry opens the exact document it came from (the references cited by the examiner, or the Information Disclosure Statement); a "cited in an objection" entry opens that objection; and a search entry opens the office's file wrapper where the search report lives.
●Each entry now also cites its source document by name and date (for example "List of references cited by examiner · 9 Apr 2026", or "European search report"), shown beneath the entry — so you can identify exactly where a citation came from even when the document itself can't be opened.
●The long "Disclosed to USPTO" column was shortened to USPTO record so it no longer crowds the relevance column.
●As before, this surface is for US applications, and whether any document matters for an application remains your assessment.

2026-06-14

US restriction requirements and species elections now show in the prosecution timeline

Prosecution

●A US examiner's requirement to restrict, or to elect a single species or embodiment for examination, now appears as its own step in the prosecution grid: distinct from a rejection, and labelled as a requirement.
●The applicant's election in response (with or without traverse) appears alongside it, paired to the requirement it answers.
●These are shown under their own "Restriction / election" heading rather than being lumped in with unity of invention, since the US requirement is a different procedure with no direct equivalent in other offices.

2026-06-12

Prosecution view keeps your data on screen through network hiccups

Prosecution

●Returning to a Scatter tab after working elsewhere no longer risks the prosecution grid going blank. Previously a brief connection drop at the wrong moment could wipe loaded rounds, citations and responses from view (the data was safe, but the screen showed an empty grid with no explanation). Loaded data now stays on screen through a failed refresh, and the next successful refresh brings it up to date.

Prosecution retrievals that fail now say so, with a retry

Prosecution

●When prosecution data can't be retrieved for an application (a slow or unavailable source, or a timeout), the row now says the retrieval failed and offers the retrieve button and PDF upload, instead of looking as if retrieval was never attempted.
●If a retrieved report can't be processed during a load, the affected application now says how many reports are waiting; they're processed automatically on the next load.
●Australian applications whose records the office's online service won't return now say the records couldn't be retrieved, instead of implying examination may not have begun. Very old Australian applications are correctly described as outside the online records' coverage.

Clearing prosecution data resets fully

Prosecution

●After "Clear all data", the searched-prior-art lists reliably re-sync on the next retrieval, and a refresh queued just before the clear can no longer repopulate the view with just-cleared rounds.

2026-06-11

Australian claim amendments no longer missing from responses

Prosecution

●Some Australian examination responses showed only the response letter, with the amended claims (clean and marked-up) silently missing — affected filings where the office names each part of the submission descriptively, and filings whose claim pages use a plain "Claims:" heading. Both shapes are now recognised: response entries show their Claims and marked-up chips, and the marked-up copy is correctly told apart from the clean one. Already-stored responses were repaired in place — 25 previously-hidden claim documents across 10 Australian applications are now visible.

Family diagram no longer breaks when filtering

Family

●Using the jurisdiction or status filter buttons while on the diagram no longer scrambles the view. Previously each filter click rebuilt the diagram from scratch: a portrait diagram silently flipped back to landscape, your zoom and position were lost, and the re-fitted view sometimes landed clipped or off-centre. The diagram now updates in place — portrait stays portrait, and the layout animates smoothly to the filtered family.
●Filtered-out family members no longer reappear as phantom "Provisional (inferred)" boxes. When a filter hid a member that others claim priority from (a lapsed parent application, say), the diagram wrongly re-drew it as a dashed inferred-provisional node — cluttering the filtered view with ghost boxes carrying the wrong status. Filtered members now disappear cleanly; only genuine provisionals (priorities that were never published family members) show as dashed nodes.

Australian voluntary amendments in the prosecution view

Prosecution

●Applicant-initiated amendments to the specification on Australian applications — including amendments filed after acceptance, and a patentee's amendments following a third-party re-examination report — now appear in the prosecution view as voluntary amendments, with the statement of proposed amendments and the amended claims (clean and marked-up) attached. Previously these filings were missing from the timeline.

2026-06-10

Upload examination reports one round at a time

ProsecutionPerf

●Uploading an examination report PDF now adds it to the rounds already stored for that application instead of replacing them. So you can upload one report per PDF as each round arrives and they accumulate into the round-by-round view, rather than each upload wiping the last. Re-uploading a report for a round you already have updates that round in place. (To start fresh, use "Clear all data".)

Search waits for matches instead of racing them

●If you type a number and hit Enter quickly, search now waits a moment for the matching suggestions to load rather than jumping ahead and telling you there are no results before the matches appear. When the matches arrive: a single match opens straight away, several show a list (with a count) for you to pick, and a genuine no-match still searches the full database. The stale "0 results" flash and lingering out-of-date suggestions are gone.

Portrait family diagram

Family

●Switching the family diagram to portrait no longer briefly shows the landscape view's downward connector arrows while the side-to-side layout computes — it shows a short "computing layout" state, then the portrait arrows (running left-to-right) appear correctly.
●PCT (international) nodes are drawn as a hexagon; in portrait its connector arrowheads are no longer hidden behind the hexagon's pointed corners — the connectors now meet the hexagon's points cleanly so the arrows are fully visible.

2026-06-09

Agent of record and member bibliographic details

Family

●Opening a family member (the "Open" panel from the table) now has a Biblio tab: the applicant, inventors, filing / publication / grant dates, priority claims, and publications at a glance. For US, Australian, European, and New Zealand members it also shows the agent of record — the firm handling the case, and for US the named registered attorneys with their registration numbers — drawn live from each office's register.

2026-06-08

New Zealand prosecution

Prosecution

●Prosecution data now covers New Zealand. Examination reports for New Zealand family members appear in the round-by-round prosecution view, with each report's objections laid out, and the applicant's responses (replies, amendments) shown alongside the round they answer. Source PDFs are available to read and download throughout.

Search New Zealand patents by their NZ number

●Searching a New Zealand application number directly now resolves its patent family in cases the main patent-data source can't — by drawing on the New Zealand register to find a related filing (a published international filing, or, when the only priority claim is to an early provisional application, the later application that grew out of it), then surfacing the New Zealand member (with its examination reports and responses) alongside its relatives. The provisional-only case — common in practice — is now handled too.

2026-06-07

Prosecution: family-cited documents not yet in a US application's record

ProsecutionFamily

●For a pending US application, the prosecution view now surfaces documents that were cited against other members of the same family but do not appear in that US application's own record. These are candidates to review for a US Information Disclosure Statement, with chips showing which family member cited each document and whether it was cited by an examiner, found in a search, or disclosed in an IDS. The list is collapsed by default, per US application.
●It is decision support, not advice: it never says a document must be disclosed, and whether anything is material or should be filed remains your assessment. The panel is honest about its limits (it reflects the family data retrieved so far, matches exact publications rather than family equivalents, and reproduces relevance categories only where the searching office provided one). Candidates also export to a dedicated sheet in the prosecution spreadsheet for IDS preparation.

Cleaner "Identified in search" list

●The list of searched documents is now collapsed by default, and when opened it separates what the office found in its search from the longer list of documents the applicant disclosed in an information disclosure statement (collapsed on its own).
●The same cited document in two different formats (for example by a European search report and a US information disclosure statement) now collapses to a single row instead of appearing twice, and search reports the applicant listed as references no longer show up as if they were prior art themselves.

2026-06-06

European applications: the prosecution view no longer lists PCT-phase filings

Prosecution

●An EP application's prosecution now shows only its EP-phase filings. Amendments and replies made during the earlier international (PCT) phase appear on the PCT/international application instead of being repeated on the EP one. The EP-entry reply to the international search opinion stays on the EP application, since it is filed there.

Clearer Documents Cited section, with source explanations

Prosecution

●The prior-art-not-objected list beneath Documents Cited is now labelled "Identified in search", and small info buttons explain where the documents come from. The relevance-category and examiner-vs-applicant detail moved into the spreadsheet export to keep the on-screen table compact.

An honest note when searched prior art can't be retrieved

ProsecutionSearch

●When the search-report source for an application can't be reached (or carries no list), the prosecution view now says so plainly beneath Documents Cited — "a searched-prior-art list could not be retrieved for this application; this does not necessarily mean none exists" — instead of silently showing nothing, which could be misread as "the examiner found nothing".

Searched-but-not-objected prior art now covers US applications

ProsecutionSearch

●US applications now get an "Identified in search" section too, completing AU/EP/US/PCT coverage: the documents the examiner cited in the search (or the applicant disclosed in an information disclosure statement) but never used to raise a rejection. For US documents, whether each was found by the examiner (a useful freedom-to-operate signal) or submitted by the applicant is recorded in the spreadsheet export.

Searched-but-not-objected prior art now covers international (PCT) applications

ProsecutionSearch

●The "Identified in search" section beneath Documents Cited now also surfaces the prior art listed in the international search report for PCT/international members, alongside the European coverage added yesterday. The section flags when it includes a document the search marked as particularly relevant but the examiner never objected on (worth a second look); the per-document relevance category is in the spreadsheet export.
●The "Identified in search" section now appears for more PCT/international applications — including some that previously showed nothing, where the international search report's citation list is now recovered. Where the report was scanned rather than typed, the relevance category for some documents may not be available; the document itself is still listed.

2026-06-05

Prior art the examiner searched but did not object on

ProsecutionSearch

●The Documents Cited table now also surfaces prior art the examiner found in the search but never used to raise an objection, in a collapsible "Identified in search" section beneath the cited documents. The section opens automatically and flags when it holds documents that are novelty-relevant or priority-dependent — the ones worth a second look for freedom-to-operate or information-disclosure work; the per-document relevance category (for example "Technological background", "Earlier filing, later published") is in the spreadsheet export. Available for European applications to start.

Older US applicant responses now show their arguments

Prosecution

●Some older US applicant responses were filed as scanned documents, and their arguments came through blank in the prosecution view. They now display their text like any other response. (Already-loaded families pick this up the next time their prosecution data is refreshed.)

2026-06-04

View an examination report as a side panel or full-screen

ProsecutionUI

●The examination-report view now works either way: keep it docked beside the prosecution grid, or expand it to a full-screen view with one click (and dock it back the same way). Your choice is remembered for the next report you open.
●Opening a report full-screen now keeps the objection-by-objection tabs and the highlighted passages — previously the full-screen view only showed the plain document, so you had to use the side panel to step through each objection. Both views are now identical in content; only the size differs.

Simpler row-detail panel

●Opening a member from the family table now shows Claims and History (and EP validations where relevant). The prosecution breakdown that used to sit here has moved entirely to the dedicated Prosecution view, which covers the same ground in more detail — so the row panel is no longer cluttered with a duplicate.

Family-diagram PDF export matches the screen for wide families

FamilyData

●When one application fans out to many national phases, the connecting lines in the exported PDF now route as a clean horizontal bus with one line dropping to each member — the same readable layout you see on screen. Previously the PDF still bunched those lines into a dense cluster even though the on-screen diagram didn't.

"Under examination" now names the latest examiner action

Prosecution

●An application under examination now shows its latest examiner action on the status pill (e.g. "Examination report No. 3") instead of a generic "Under examination", so you can see at a glance how far prosecution has gone — and it tracks the most recent action, not the first. The family diagram stays a clean status overview (the standard category labels), with the detail available on hover.

Pending applications show their latest status event, not a bare "Filed"

Status

●A member with no granted/lapsed/examination status used to read a plain "Filed". It now shows its most recent legal-status event instead (e.g. "Request for examination filed", "Publication", a recorded ownership change), so you can see at a glance where each pending member actually stands. The status colour is unchanged — only the label gets more specific. Applies across the family table, the diagram, the prosecution view, and the spreadsheet export.

2026-06-03

Objection highlights open faster

ProsecutionUIPerf

●Highlighted passages are now prepared in the background as soon as a report's objections appear in the prosecution grid, so the first objection you open shows its highlight straight away instead of pausing to locate it. Switching between objections in the same report, and re-opening one you have already viewed, are instant too.

Prosecution grid scrolls sideways when it's wider than the screen

ProsecutionUI

●Families with several examination rounds (or a narrow window) could leave the right-hand round columns cut off with no way to reach them. The grid now scrolls horizontally to bring every round into view, with the column headers pinned in place as you scroll down.

Fewer phantom provisional applications in family diagrams

Family

●Some German applications are recorded with the serial's leading zero in one place and without it in another, so the two forms were treated as separate applications and a phantom provisional inferred. Both forms now resolve to the same application; affected families are corrected automatically.

Clearer family diagrams when one application has many national phases

Family

●When a single priority fans out to many national-phase members (large pharmaceutical families, for example), the connecting lines used to bunch into a dense cluster of near-parallel verticals before spreading to the members. They now route as a clean horizontal bus with one line dropping to each member, so the relationships are easy to follow. (The diagram's PDF export is unchanged for now — a follow-up.)

Search suggestions no longer get stuck on "0 results"

●After a brief connection hiccup, a search could keep showing "0 results" for a particular number for the rest of the session even once the connection recovered (pressing Enter still found the patent). Suggestions now recover as soon as the connection does.

2026-06-02

See each objection highlighted in the examiner's report

ProsecutionUI

●Clicking an objection now opens the examiner's report itself, scrolled to and highlighting the whole passage the objection is drawn from, with a toggle to the structured summary. Works across jurisdictions, including scanned reports with no underlying text.

European pre-examination amendments separate the arguments from the amended claims

Prosecution

●A pre-examination amendment was showing the amended claim set under "Arguments"; the arguments letter and the amended claims are now correctly separated, each opening the right document, with the marked-up version available as its own tab. Existing European applications corrected automatically.

The product tour spotlights each step and moves more smoothly

Onboarding

●The guided tour now dims the rest of the page to spotlight the feature it points at, and the highlight and tip card glide between steps instead of jumping.

Filed documents open in one consistent viewer

●Applicant responses now open in the same centred full-document viewer as examination reports and the specification, with their component tabs where applicable. Clicking an objection still opens the side panel, since that shows structured text rather than a document.

2026-06-01

Search suggestions, links, and family diagrams corrected

FamilySearch

●Clicking a search suggestion now always opens the right family — suggestions navigate by the unambiguous publication number, fixing cases where an application number matched a different patent's publication.
●WO members now link to the correct Google Patents page, built from the publication number rather than the application number.
●Family diagrams no longer show phantom provisional applications where a shared priority was recorded in two formats across offices — both now resolve to the same member.
●The family status chart now fills each column in proportion to the whole family, rather than scaling to the largest segment.
●Citations with no downloadable document hide their download button (with a brief notice) instead of showing a browser error; cited prior-art links fall back to a second patent database when the primary one has no record.

2026-05-31

See where a granted European patent is in force

Status

●Granted European members now have a "Validations" tab listing the contracting states where the patent is validated and whether each is in force (green, at the top) or lapsed (struck through, below), with the date and description of each state's most recent event.
●Built from the per-state events the European Patent Register publishes; coverage is uneven, so a missing state doesn't necessarily mean the patent isn't in force there (the panel notes this). The tab appears only on granted European members.

2026-05-30

Summons to oral proceedings now sit inside the round they followed

Prosecution

●A Summons to oral proceedings (and any other follow-up procedural notice) now appears as a compact chip at the bottom of the examination round it followed, rather than in a separate trailing column — so a round reads top to bottom: examiner's report, applicant's response, then the procedural notice that closed it out. A notice with no preceding round stays in the "Other" column, which only appears when there's content for it.

Tooltips on truncated chip labels

●Compact chips in the prosecution grid — pre-examination amendments, procedural notices, and the abbreviated arguments excerpt under a response — now show their full label on hover, helpful when a long flavour-label is cut off by the ellipsis.

Documents Cited no longer stretches for one long reference

Prosecution

●An unusually long reference title (common when a non-patent citation is spelled out in full) was widening the whole Reference column and leaving the rest sparse. Each cell's width is now capped, with the full text on hover.

Pre-examination amendments now live alongside the spec-as-filed

Prosecution

●The separate Pre-Examination column is gone; pre-examination amendments now appear inline in the Application column, just below the as-filed specification link, and clicking a pre-examination chip opens the same response panel as before. The grid no longer reserves a whole column for the family when only one row had a pre-examination amendment.

PCT application breadcrumb uses the canonical PCT form

●For PCT (WO) applications, the breadcrumb (and the prosecution grid's Application column) now show the canonical PCT form — for example "PCT/CA/2003/001103" — instead of an opaque receiving-office serial like "WO0301103".

Search stays responsive during slow family fetches, and surfaces API errors

FamilySearch

●The search palette (Ctrl+K) no longer freezes during a family fetch — you can keep typing or hit Enter on a new query to abort the in-flight one and start again.
●When the suggestion service can't be reached, the palette now shows "Couldn't reach search API" rather than silently reading "0 results"; the "0 results" state is reserved for genuine no-matches.

Prosecution grid no longer inflates for procedural EP documents

Prosecution

●European applications with oral-proceedings stages were showing a full column for each procedural document (a Summons, a consultation follow-up), burying the substantive examiner outputs. Those now collapse into a single rightmost "Other" column of compact chips; the main columns hold only the reports and Annexes that carry objections. Positive-signal rounds (a clean acceptance report, a clean international evaluation) keep their own column.

Family overview status legend now reads as a small bar chart

FamilyStatusUI

●The full-width status bar under the family stats has been folded into the legend itself: each status label now carries a small horizontal bar under its count, so the family's distribution reads at a glance without a separate full-width bar.

2026-05-29

Applications under examination now read correctly

Prosecution

●An application being examined no longer sits under the generic "Filed" status. Two signals now drive the "Under examination" reading: the examining office has issued its first examination report, or Scatter has retrieved the examination history (even where the official status hasn't caught up).
●The corrected status flows through the status pill, the status filter, the family diagram, and the dashboard counts. Granted, accepted, lapsed, or expired applications are never affected — only those with no clearer signal are upgraded.

2026-05-28

Family diagram layout corrections

FamilyUI

●PCT applications no longer overlap their own child junction on multi-parent families: the PCT node was being pulled below the routing point it fans through, leaving it lower than its own children; it now sits correctly above them.
●German provisional applications link to all their claiming members. Some offices record the provisional's number in one format and others use a different layout for the same number; both now resolve to one provisional node, so it links to the PCT and all national-phase members rather than dead-ending at the one member that used a particular format.

Prior-art citation chips always show their tooltip

ProsecutionUI

●Hovering a citation label (D1, D2, a patent number) on an objection card now reliably shows the full reference. On some citations — particularly older European references whose link couldn't be verified — the tooltip was silently stopping after the first hover; the chip element is now stable regardless of link state.

Pinned EP applications with check digits now open correctly

●European application numbers sometimes carry a trailing check digit (for example EP12794187.5). A pinned one could navigate to a broken URL; the pin now stores and navigates using the clean application number, matching the form the EPO's own systems accept.

Status pills track current legal status more accurately

Status

●European patents that survived the opposition window now read "No opposition filed within time limit" instead of carrying the earlier intent-to-grant text indefinitely.
●Withdrawn events (kept in the legal record with a "deleted" marker) are no longer treated as live — they previously overstated a case, e.g. showing granted after an intent-to-grant was withdrawn and examination resumed. The pill now reads from whatever happened next.
●Korean applications under examination now read "Under examination" instead of "Filed" — the examiner's opinion-submission notice wasn't being picked up before.

Korean examination reports keep their mailing dates

Prosecution

●Korean examination reports use Hangul date markers (the characters for year/month/day) the date verifier didn't recognise, so a correctly read mailing date was thrown out and the round dropped into the manual "missing date" prompt. Hangul dates and the Korean dot-separated format (like 2026. 4. 20.) now verify automatically, so KR rounds slot into the grid in date order.

2026-05-27

Prosecution grid shows the publication number on the spec button

Prosecution

●The As initially published button on each prosecution row now shows the actual publication number (for example EP1000000A1) instead of a generic label, so with several members open it's clear which specification you're about to open.

2026-05-26

Older examination reports now fill in their PDF previews automatically

ProsecutionData

●Some older stored reports had no copy of their source PDF, so the round cell wasn't clickable. Scatter now quietly re-fetches just the missing PDF in the background on the next load; stored objections and citations are untouched.

Search tells you when there's nothing to autocomplete

●Typing a complete patent number that matches nothing in the autocomplete now says so in the dropdown, rather than letting you hit Enter and wait for a doomed full lookup. The autocomplete doesn't index every record, so pressing Enter still runs the full lookup if you think the number is right.

2026-05-24

Filed responses load alongside the examiner's reports in one pass

ProsecutionPerf

●For heavier cases (European especially), the examiner's reports and your filed responses now load together in a single pass — the round-by-round grid completes the first time, rather than surfacing the reports first and filling in responses on a later visit.

2026-05-23

Larger examination reports load reliably, and faster

ProsecutionPerf

●Retrieving long or multi-document reports that previously could run out of time and fail now completes reliably: each report is fetched and read independently and in parallel, each round appears as soon as it's ready, and a case that doesn't finish in one pass resumes where it left off instead of starting over.

2026-05-22

Fix: correct application numbers for older US patents

●Older US patents (filed before ~2001) were showing the wrong application number — e.g. 20/685,698 where the real number is 09/206,856. It's now decoded correctly to its US series and serial, so it reads right and matches the official record.
●The File Wrapper and Global Dossier links for those members were carrying the same wrong number; they now use the corrected one. (The very oldest US applications predate the USPTO's online file-wrapper, so some pre-2001 file-wrapper pages may still have no record — a source coverage limit, not a wrong link.)

2026-05-21

European examination reports load more reliably

ProsecutionPerf

●Pulling examination reports for some European applications could stall on "Downloading…" or come back empty even though documents existed. Retrieval now completes reliably, a slow response times out cleanly instead of freezing the page, and a transient hiccup on one page retries rather than abandoning the whole document.

Fix: cited documents no longer disappear in the prosecution view

Prosecution

●On some families whose prosecution history comes from the international (PCT) phase, the Documents Cited list could appear and then vanish once loading finished. It now stays put — driven by the stored prosecution data, so a slow or unsuccessful background refresh can't wipe it.

Preview the specification as initially published, from the prosecution view

Prosecution

●Each application in the prosecution grid now carries an As initially published link: click Specification (PDF) to preview the application as first published (description, claims, drawings), with a Download button alongside. It always pulls the application publication (what entered examination), not the granted text. Coverage spans EP / WO / AU and modern US / JP / KR, cached after the first open. Where an application was only ever published at grant (some older US patents), no link appears.

2026-05-20

Translate-to-English now works for examination reports in any language

Prosecution

●The Translate to English button in the objection panel used to appear only on German, French, and Spanish reports. The detector now recognises non-English content from the script of the letters rather than a fixed language list, so any non-Latin-script report (CJK, Cyrillic, Arabic, Greek, …) — and any Latin-script report lacking the connective tissue of English — surfaces the button. The translation itself was always language-agnostic; this just shows the button everywhere it should.

2026-05-19

Documents Cited: one-click PDF download + English-translated patent links

ProsecutionPerfData

●The Documents Cited table now has a Download icon next to every patent reference — the full PDF downloads directly, cached after the first time. Coverage spans EP / WO / US (grants + pre-grant) and major-office grants; pre-1980 and obscure utility-model series may have no downloadable PDF and still show the patent link.
●Patent links for non-English publications now default to the English translation overlay, saving a click on every Japanese, Korean, or Chinese citation. Non-patent references still go to a scholarly search.

Cleaner prosecution grid: status at the right, voluntary amendments grouped, side panel fixes

ProsecutionStatusUI

●Status moved to the rightmost column, reading as the outcome of the timeline rather than identity info; the application cell now shows office, number, dates, and a file-wrapper link.
●Voluntary amendments are always grouped in the Pre-examination column — a pre-examination amendment is an applicant-initiated submission, not a reply to a particular examiner output, so it no longer lands in the First Report column when filed after a search opinion.
●The side panel never shows the wrong document: when several documents classify as the same component (e.g. a Rule 161 reply bundled with a cover sheet, or a US Preliminary Amendment with both an instruction sheet and the full amended specification), it picks the substantive content over the procedural marker.
●The marked-up tab is labelled "Specification (marked-up)", and "Source text not available" now links to the office file wrapper so you can fetch the document yourself.

2026-05-18

AU response side panel now shows Claims, Description, and a marked-up amendments view

ProsecutionUI

Click any Australian response in the prosecution grid and you'll see four tabs in the side panel: Arguments, Claims, Description, and Marked-up.

Older filings that only ship one bundled PDF still show as a single Arguments tab. Filings that omit one of the components show only the tabs that have content.

●For applications you retrieved before today's change, clear and re-fetch via "Clear all data" in the Prosecution tab to pick up the new tabs.
●Arguments — the response letter to IP Australia.
●Claims — the clean amended claims (the legally operative version).
●Description — the clean amended description.
●Marked-up — the track-changes view bundling claim and description amendments in one document. Useful for seeing exactly what changed without diffing the clean copies by eye.

Better objection classification, smarter citation pickup, and more useful "no data" messages

Prosecution

A few prosecution-grid improvements landed today.

●Objections are now classified by what the examiner is arguing in the body, not by the section heading. Australian Section 40 reports often head a single objection with all the grounds the section covers ("support, disclosure, clarity, lack of unity") even when only one ground is actually being raised. The grid will now read the body and label the objection by the issue actually argued.
●Citations stick to objections that refer to documents generally. An inventive-step objection that says "claim 1 lacks an inventive contribution over the cited documents" will now pick up the documents being cited from the surrounding context, instead of showing an empty citation row.
●Australian responses now show the actual response letter, not the cover sheet. For modern Australian filings (the multi-PDF style introduced in recent years), the side panel was rendering IP Australia's procedural cover sheet listing attachments, not the substantive letter itself. Fixed. For applications where you already retrieved Australian responses before today's change, you can clear and re-fetch via "Clear all data" in the Prosecution tab to pick up the corrected shape.
●US "no data" message now distinguishes three cases. Previously every US application with no office actions saw the same "applications before 2001 aren't available" message — including applications that were granted on first-action allowance, and applications that simply haven't been examined yet. The grid now tells you which case applies.
●The "Server reports N rounds but no data found locally" warning is gone. When the system detects that the cached round count doesn't match what's stored locally, it now silently re-fetches fresh data instead of asking you to click a button. You see a brief loading state and the data appears.

2026-05-17

Freshness indicator next to each status pill

Status

Hover any dot for the full label. The status pills themselves are unchanged.

●Rows whose status comes from the wider mirror data now carry a small grey dot next to the status pill, telling you the status may lag a few days behind the office's own register.
●No dot — status is confirmed against the office of origin (currently AU and US — Scatter direct-fetches from those registers).
●Grey dot — status comes from the mirror data, which can lag a few days behind. Hover for which office is affected.

Applicant responses extended to US, European, and PCT applications

Prosecution

Each response carries a specific flavour label so the kind of submission is unambiguous at a glance:

Response components are split for fast scanning: written arguments show a short preview of the opening line; amended claims and amended description appear as separate chips that open the full text in the side panel. Procedural cover sheets and transmittal forms stay available for download but are hidden from the primary view to keep the cell uncluttered.

●The applicant response surface now covers every jurisdiction Scatter retrieves prosecution data from. Following the morning's Australian launch, US, European, and PCT/WO responses now appear in the prosecution grid alongside the examiner reports they reply to. The same response block, side panel, and Excel export work uniformly across all four jurisdictions.
●US responses distinguish a response after rejection, an amendment after notice of allowance, and a request for continued examination.
●European responses distinguish a reply to an examination communication, a reply to an international search opinion, and a PCT preliminary examination amendment.
●PCT/international responses surface preliminary examination amendments and replies on the international application row, in addition to the same documents appearing on the European national-phase row.

Applicant responses now visible alongside examiner reports in the prosecution grid

Prosecution

Each response block shows the filing date, whether it was a substantive response or a voluntary amendment, and a preview of the opening arguments. Clicking opens a side panel with the full text broken down by component: arguments, amended claims, and amended description where available. Source PDFs download directly from the panel.

The Excel export gains a third sheet for responses alongside the existing sheets for the objection grid and Documents Cited.

This initial rollout covers Australian applications. Support for US, European, and PCT applications is being added in the sessions immediately following.

●The prosecution grid now shows both sides of the prosecution history. Applicant responses — including responses to examination reports and voluntary amendments filed at any stage — appear below the relevant examiner report in the same column. A response filed before any examination began appears in a separate column to the left of the grid.

Smoother loading and a centred patent family diagram

FamilyPerf

●Loading screens now preview the page you're about to see. Searching a family, opening prosecution data, or drafting a letter now shows a layout-matching skeleton of the upcoming view rather than a generic loading indicator. The page no longer reflows on data arrival.
●The patent family diagram now opens centred. Switching to the Diagram view used to show the diagram briefly off to one side before swooping into place. It now lands centred on the first reveal. Filter changes and orientation swaps still animate smoothly.

2026-05-15

Improved accepted/granted status for Canadian, Korean, and Brazilian families

Status

●Canadian and Korean applications that have been formally accepted now show as granted. Previously, a Canadian or Korean application that had received an official notice of intent to grant would still appear as "Filed" in the status column, even though no further substantive examination was pending. The status pill now turns green at acceptance, matching how Australian, European, and US allowances are already handled.
●An additional Brazilian grant signal is now recognised. A second gazette chapter code used by INPI for patent issuance was not previously covered; affected applications showed "Filed" instead of "Granted".

Upload reliability, dark-mode terms page, and extraction resilience

StatusPerfData

●Uploading an examination report now works reliably from any row. A regression introduced earlier this week caused the Upload PDF button on empty rows to silently do nothing: picking a file appeared to succeed but no extraction ran and no progress appeared. Affected all jurisdictions. This is now fixed.
●The Terms and Privacy page is now readable in dark mode. Previously, switching to dark mode left the terms page with dark text on a dark background. The page also now correctly lists all the jurisdictions we retrieve prosecution history from.
●Transient network interruptions during AI extraction now recover automatically. If a brief connection blip occurs mid-extraction, the tool retries once and continues without surfacing an error. Persistent failures still report as before.

2026-05-14

Examination report PDFs available for download and inline preview

ProsecutionPerfData

●Every examination report in the prosecution grid now carries the original PDF. Each round cell now leads with a document chip naming the report type and mailing date, with a download icon for saving the original to your records and a click target that opens the PDF inline in a preview pane. Reports retrieved automatically and reports you upload both behave the same way, so a single attorney workflow covers either path. Earlier reports captured before this change keep their objection cards but show the title only — re-running them on the file wrapper will pull the PDF on the next pass.

Table and prosecution grid usability improvements

ProsecutionFamily

●The family table now scrolls sideways between tablet and desktop widths. On screens between about 768 and 1024 pixels wide the table previously collapsed into a compact card layout, discarding most of the column detail. It now stays as a full table and scrolls horizontally, so all columns remain accessible at that size range. Cards are reserved for phone-width screens only.
●Opening a side panel no longer squashes the family table. At desktop widths, opening the prosecution, claims, or history panel for a family member was pushing the table through its breakpoint and collapsing the column headers. The sidebar now steps back automatically when a panel opens, so the table keeps its full width.
●The family status bar now shows an amber segment for applications under examination. The coloured overview bar at the top of a search result previously grouped examined applications under the same grey band as pending applications. Applications under active examination now appear in the amber segment, matching the amber pill in the table.
●The prosecution history grid scrolls as a unit. The application column was previously pinned to the left side of the grid so it stayed visible while the examination round columns scrolled away. The whole grid now scrolls together, keeping the application context tied to its examination rounds.

2026-05-13

Status now reflects what the office of origin actually says

Status

●Australian acceptance and US allowance now show as soon as the office records them. The status column previously read the bulk legal-event feed, which lags the office of origin by weeks or months — most visibly for Australian applications that had been accepted but were still showing as "Filed" or "Under examination". Status for Australian and US applications now comes directly from the office of origin (the IP Australia public search and the USPTO Patent Center). A small tooltip on the status pill indicates when fresher data is in play.
●Applications under examination are now identified explicitly. Previously, an application that had been examined but not yet granted, refused, or lapsed would show as "Filed" — indistinguishable from one that had only just been published. Substantive examination signals now flip the status to "Under examination". Initial coverage applies to European and Japanese applications where the underlying signal is registered; other jurisdictions will follow as the signal coverage grows.
●Family diagram and dashboard counts now stay in lockstep with the table. When the status pill in the table reflected a fresher signal, the diagram and the "accepted" count on the dashboard could remain on the older value. They now update together every time.
●"Accepted" applications render alongside granted ones in the diagram and statistics. An Australian application that has been accepted but not yet sealed is treated as alive in the same way a granted patent is — same colour in the diagram, counted in the same dashboard statistic, sorted alongside granted in the status column. The label "Accepted" is preserved so the distinction is still visible.

Search, citations, and prosecution grid refinements

ProsecutionSearch

●Publications in non-Latin scripts now show with an English translation alongside. When the queried application is Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Russian, or another non-Latin-script publication, the title and applicant name appear in the dashboard header in the original script with the English translation shown immediately below in brackets. The translation is cached so it only runs once per publication.
●Hyphenated patent numbers now resolve in search. Japanese application numbers in the official year-hyphen-serial format (for example JP2023-576177) were not returning typeahead suggestions. They now search correctly.
●WO entries past the national-phase deadline no longer show a misleading date. The status label for a PCT application whose 30-month national-phase window has closed previously showed the application's filing date below "International Expired" as if it were an expiry date. That date is now suppressed. When an application was explicitly withdrawn, the withdrawal date continues to show.
●Korean citations in different styles now appear as one entry in Documents Cited. The same Korean publication can appear in an examination report in the official Korean style or in the international registry style, which differ in their number format. Both writings now collapse to a single row in the Documents Cited table.
●Examination rounds with no remaining objections now appear in the prosecution grid. An examination report where the examiner found no remaining grounds — for example an Australian pre-acceptance report or a clean PCT Chapter I evaluation — previously disappeared from the prosecution grid because it had no objection data to display. It now appears as an explicit "No objections raised" column in the correct chronological position, so you can see the full prosecution timeline without gaps.
●The dossier link for Australian applications now opens the current AusPat search page. The previous link target had been retired by IP Australia and was returning a page-not-found error. The updated link opens directly in AusPat's patent search interface.
●Non-Latin-script titles and applicant names now show their English translation on the same line. Previously the translation appeared on a separate line below the original. It now sits inline in brackets immediately after the original text, keeping the header compact.
●WO/PCT Chapter I examination content is now sourced more reliably. In some cases the source that Scatter was reading for PCT Chapter I examination content turned out to be a cover-page summary rather than the actual report with examiners' reasoning and cited prior art. Scatter now detects this and retrieves the substantive content instead, so the prosecution grid and Documents Cited table reflect what the examiner actually wrote.
●The family diagram now re-centres reliably when you switch to the Diagram tab. Opening the diagram from the segmented control, navigating directly to a diagram URL, or using keyboard navigation could previously leave the diagram offset or zoomed oddly. It now refits to show the full tree every time the tab becomes visible.

2026-05-11

Small UX fixes

The family diagram now refits to the full tree whenever you switch to the Diagram tab, not just on the first load. Previously it would stay zoomed or offset from a previous layout if you switched tabs and came back.

On mobile, the family-page breadcrumb no longer disappears behind the navigation menu — there is now a clear zone between the menu button and the breadcrumb text so both are readable at once.

Every dialog (search, terms, PCT deadline list, full-report view) now has a slightly more transparent backdrop in light mode and a slightly denser one in dark mode, and no blur effect. The content behind stays readable; the modal still has clear visual focus.

2026-05-09

Scatter on a phone, properly

A pass through the whole app at iPhone-SE width tightened the parts that didn't quite fit. The marketing nav now has a hamburger menu so phone users can actually reach Roadmap, Changelog, About, and Terms. The breadcrumb on a family page no longer truncates to ellipsis — on small screens it shows just "App. {number}" instead of trying to fit "Family of App. … · Pub. …" alongside the pin and share buttons. The Prosecution / Claims / History tabs in the side panel got bigger tap targets. The PCT national-phase deadlines modal now scrolls correctly inside its own box (it was overflowing past the dialog at certain heights), and every office in the list now shows its country name — Antigua and Barbuda, Cabo Verde, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and 60-odd others used to render as bare codes.

A few smaller refinements: the date input in the missing-date prompt fills the full width on mobile instead of stacking next to a 160-px application-number column, the About page stats band wraps to a single column, and the search box on the landing hero shrinks its submit button to just an arrow on narrow screens so the placeholder text doesn't collide with it.

2026-05-08

translate non-English objections to English on demand

Prosecution

When an examination report comes in German, French, Spanish, or another non-English language, the side panel for each objection now offers a Translate to English button. Click it and you get a clean, patent-attorney-register translation alongside the original — article references, claim numbers, and cited document numbers preserved verbatim. The translation is cached after the first click, so each translated objection costs nothing on subsequent reads.

The translation stays visible if you close and reopen the side panel within the session. We've also tightened the prosecution grid so cover communications without substantive content (a common pattern in EP Art 94(3) prosecution that defers to the search opinion) no longer take up an empty column — rounds compact left-to-right and the column you see is "this application's first / second / third substantive examiner output."

A bunch of citation links that previously didn't resolve to Google Patents now do: EP citations in EPO format like EP-A-0 713 967, EP citations missing their leading zero pad like EP-A-233461, and Japanese Showa-era citations like JP 60 256555 A (which Google indexes with a JPS prefix). Family priority claims like 07 113356.5 echoed by Brazilian and Chinese members no longer get inferred as a separate provisional with a bogus "07" office code — the Family Diagram and member count are accurate again.

automatic PCT prosecution extraction

ProsecutionData

WO/PCT family members now populate prosecution rounds automatically when you open a family that contains them. The International Preliminary Report and any examiner-issued international-phase reports appear on the WO row alongside the rest of the prosecution timeline, no upload needed.

In families with multiple PCT applications, each WO row carries its own timeline rather than collapsing them together — useful when a portfolio has divisional-style or continuation-style PCT filings.

automatic EP examination report extraction

ProsecutionData

Open a family with European applications and the prosecution rounds now populate automatically — no upload required. EP examination communications, search opinions, and annexes appear in the round grid the moment the family loads, alongside US and Australian reports.

Works across all three EPO procedural languages (German, French, English) — examiner-issued documents are processed in their native language and tagged with universal objection types (Novelty, Inventive Step, Clarity, Support…) so you can scan across jurisdictions without re-learning vocabulary. Re-opening a family is free: already-extracted reports are skipped.

EP applications that came via PCT and proceeded to grant without a substantive EP communication will appear without extracted rounds for now — the underlying international-phase opinions surface on the WO row instead.

2026-05-07 — evening (very recent applications now load)

When a brand-new patent application appears in search but its INPADOC family record hasn't been built yet (typical for filings published in the last few days), the family page used to show "No patent family found" — even though the application itself was perfectly retrievable. Now the page renders a single-member family for these cases, so you see the application you searched for instead of an error. The wider family will show up automatically once INPADOC builds its record (usually within a few days of publication).

2026-05-07 — afternoon (PCT jurisdictions modal + responsive polish)

Click any PCT row's deadline for the full jurisdiction list

Data

The 30-month national-phase deadline shown on PCT rows is a useful default, but every attorney knows the real picture is jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction. Click the date now and a modal opens with the complete list grouped by deadline (30 months default, 31 months including AU and EP, plus a few outliers like Bosnia at 34 months). Offices that allow late entry on payment of a fee — Canada, China, the Philippines, Türkiye — are tagged with a + FEE badge inline.

The list is sourced from the WIPO PCT Applicant's Guide and date-stamped in the modal. Behind the scenes Scatter checks weekly for changes to the WIPO data and surfaces anything that has shifted, so the list stays current without manual maintenance.

Better visual cues for tooltipped data

Tooltipped Term-column dates (PCT 30m, US Patent Term Adjustment, EP Supplementary Protection Certificates) now have a small info icon next to them — much more obvious than the previous dotted underline. Same icon appears next to the Term column header so you know there's a longer explanation available without having to hover.

Mobile and laptop layout fixes

●The header on the family page no longer squishes the view switcher (Table / Diagram / Prosecution) on narrower viewports. It now stacks cleanly into two rows below laptop width.
●The diagram legend on phones now opens from a small "Legend" button instead of always covering the top-right corner.
●The onboarding tour card resizes properly on small phones.
●The landing page demo surfaces resize cleanly on tablet and phone widths.

2026-05-07 (PCT lifecycle: status, deadline, diagram)

PCT applications now show the right thing

PCT (WO) applications follow a different lifecycle from national patents — they never grant in the international phase, and the only deadline that matters is the 30-month window for entering national phase. The status badge and the Term column now reflect that.

●Status: PCT rows show "International" (green) while the 30-month national-phase window is open, and "International expired" (red) once it has closed (either past 30 months from priority, or because the applicant explicitly withdrew the PCT).
●Term column: PCT rows used to show nothing in the Term column. They now show the 30-month national-phase entry deadline, calculated from the earliest priority (or the international filing date if no priority is claimed). Hovering the date explains the deadline and notes that many jurisdictions — including AU and EP — accept 31 months, with a few accepting 32.

Family diagram badges now match the table

Family

In some families the diagram showed a PCT as "International" (green) while the table correctly showed it as "International expired" (red). The two surfaces now agree.

2026-05-06 (Australian prosecution retrieval + status accuracy fix)

Prosecution analysis now available for Australian applications

Prosecution

You can now retrieve and extract examination reports directly from the IP Australia public file wrapper for AU applications. The "Retrieve from AusPat" button works the same way as "Retrieve from USPTO" does for US applications — examination reports are downloaded, the objections and cited documents are extracted, and the prosecution round grid populates.

Coverage: standard patent applications where IP Australia has made the examination file wrapper public. If no examination reports are found, the panel says so rather than showing an error.

Status accuracy fix for lapsed AU applications

Status

Some Australian applications that lapsed by failing to pay the acceptance fee were incorrectly showing as Granted. The status display is now correct for these applications.

If you loaded an AU family before this fix and saw a member as Granted that should be Lapsed, re-loading the family will show the corrected status.

Status accuracy improves over time

Status

Status detection now improves automatically as new legal-event signals are encountered across families. National offices use a long tail of office-specific event types; previously, signals outside our coverage could leave a member showing the wrong status. The system now learns from each new signal it sees, so the second time a family containing that signal is loaded the status is correct.

2026-05-06 (faster loading for large patent families)

Searches on big families are now faster

SearchPerf

Loading a patent family with many members (Gleevec, sildenafil, and similarly crowded families typically have 50-150+ members) now completes in roughly half the time, with no loss of detail.

2026-05-05 (cross-office status accuracy + many small polish fixes)

Status detection now covers many more offices

Status

●Brazil patents now correctly display as granted when their legal events show issuance (previously stuck on "Filed").
●Mexican patents with "CONCESION" events now display as granted.
●Israeli patents with "PATENT GRANTED" events now display as granted.
●16 new offices have legal-event coverage added: BR, CS, CZ, DK, ES, FI, HU, IE, IL, MX, NO, NZ, PT, RU, SK, TW. If you load a family with members in any of these, the status column should now reflect grant / expired / discontinued correctly.
●Existing offices (AU, CN, DE, EP, JP, KR, US) gained additional codes too — e.g. JP yakuji-rei extension events are now recognised, US PTE-granted events are now recognised.

Status block always shows a date

Status

●Older families used to show a status block with no date underneath when the status was inferred from the kind code (e.g. AU "GRANTED" with no FGA event in the legal data). The status block now displays the publication date as a fallback for granted patents, or the filing date for filed/pending applications.

Application numbers no longer show a stray ".A" suffix

●For older non-EP patents, application numbers used to show as e.g. "AU3569493.A" — the trailing ".A" was the kind code being incorrectly appended. Now displays cleanly as "AU3569493".

Search input now handles dots

●Searching for an EP application number with its check digit (e.g. "EP93810219.1") used to produce "No patent family found" because the dot was being stripped before the lookup. Now resolves correctly.

Status sorting

Status

●Sorting the family table by Status used to collapse rows with no explicit legal-event status text to one end of the list. Now sorts by the resolved status (active / pending / inactive) so all granted patents group together regardless of whether their status came from a legal event or kind-code inference.

Header tooltip + capitalisation

●Term column header tooltip refreshed to reflect what's actually applied (PTA + TD for US members; SPC details in row tooltip for European pharma; not yet for US PTE / AU s.70 / JP / KR extensions).
●Sortable column headers (Office, Application, Status, Title) now match the all-caps styling of the non-sortable headers.

History view colour coding

●History timeline events are now coloured per-office. A code that's "granted" in one office but a different category in another no longer gets the wrong colour — the event's own country tag drives the colour now.

PDF diagram node text

FamilyData

●Patent family diagram exports as PDF now fit text within the node boxes for large families. Previously the row spacing was generous enough that text could overflow when many members had to be packed onto a page.

Bug fixes you might have hit

●"Refused" EP applications now correctly classify as lapsed.
●Pre-AIA US patents with kind code "A" (pre-2001 grants like US6093011) classify as granted.
●"(EXPECTED) GRANT OF PATENT" placeholder strings on EP applications no longer count as actual grants.

2026-05-04 (patent term improvements + older family fixes)

US Patent Term Adjustment now applied

Status

●The Term column on US members now includes Patent Term Adjustment (the days the USPTO awards to compensate for prosecution delay). Continuations and divisionals get the right answer too — adjustments apply on top of the term-clock anchor from the parent filing.
●Where a continuation has a terminal disclaimer, the term is correctly capped at the parent's expiry. The Term column shows the capped date and a tooltip explains why.
●Adjusted dates have a dotted underline in the column. Hover for the breakdown.

Per-country SPC information

●The Term column tooltip now shows Supplementary Protection Certificate (SPC) details for European pharma families. Lists each EU member state with its product name, SPC status (filed / granted / expired), and expiry date where the data is available.
●The column itself still shows the base 20-year term — exact SPC dates vary by country, so showing one country's date as the row's primary value would be misleading.

Older families now show full data

●Patents from the 1990s (and other older non-EP applications) used to display with empty Term, blank titles, and missing priorities for many family members. Three data-source quirks were compounding to silently lose this data — all three are now fixed.
●Real example: searching for the imatinib (Gleevec) family — 22 members, all show their correct filing dates, all show priorities, all but two show titles (those two genuinely have no title in the upstream data).

Status corrections

Status

●"APPLICATION REFUSED" applications now correctly show as lapsed (previously shown as "filed" — over-optimistic).
●EP placeholder strings like "(EXPECTED) GRANT OF PATENT" and "INFORMATION ON THE STATUS OF AN EP PATENT APPLICATION" no longer match as granted (these are EP biblio metadata, not actual grant events).
●Pre-AIA US grants from before 2001 (kind code "A" with a bare 7-digit number) now correctly show as granted instead of misclassified.

PCT term suppressed

Status

●WO/PCT rows no longer show a 20-year expiry date. PCT applications never grant — they have no enforceable term.

Tooltip styling

●All tooltips across the app now use the styled component for visual consistency (dark mode support, hover delay, multi-line layout). New regressions of inconsistent native browser tooltips are prevented at lint time.

2026-04-29 (bug fixes)

Documents Cited fixes

Prosecution

●"US Patent N" references now produce working Google Patents links. Previously, only the form "US Patent No. N" was recognised; bare "US Patent 6,157,917" was rendered as plain text.
●Case-law citations (e.g. *Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International*) extracted from §101 / eligibility rejections are now correctly excluded from the Documents Cited table. They are legal precedent, not prior art. If you have stored data showing a case-law row, clearing data for the affected application and re-fetching will remove it.

Prosecution row prompt

Prosecution

●After a failed "Retrieve from USPTO" attempt (e.g. the application is too old for the USPTO API), the round columns now show "Upload an examination report PDF to begin." — previously they went blank, leaving you with no clear next step.

2026-04-28 (family identity + data quality)

One URL per family, no matter how you searched

FamilySearch

●Searching by publication number or application number now lands on the same canonical URL. Bookmarks, shared links, and browser history all point to one place.
●Recent searches collapse to a single entry per family, regardless of which identifier you used to find it.
●The breadcrumb shows both identifiers: "Family of App. EP99203729 · Pub. EP1000000B1".

Correct application-number formatting

●Older US patents that previously showed with a garbled application number (such as "20/685,698") now display correctly as "09/206,856" — the actual series and serial number as filed.
●EP application numbers now include their check digit ("EP99203729.1"), computed via EPO's standard algorithm when the data source doesn't return it directly.

Older EP families now show titles and priorities

●Families that previously appeared with blank title and no priority dates now populate correctly, via a fallback that fetches each member's data individually when the family endpoint returns incomplete records.

Office code tooltips

●Hover any office pill (US, EP, AU, ...) for the full office name.

Dead patent links removed silently

●Citation links that lead to a 404 on Google Patents (common for utility models and obscure jurisdictions) now disappear automatically after a background check, so you never click into a broken page.

Command palette improvements

●Search suggestions appear first, then recents, then commands — in the order that reflects how you actually use it.
●Commands ("Pin this family", "Toggle theme", "Show shortcuts") are now searchable: type the command name to find it instead of having it clutter the list while you're searching for a patent.

Bigger social preview

●The preview card when sharing a Scatter link on Slack, Facebook, or iMessage is now significantly larger and easier to read.

2026-04-28 (prosecution polish)

Background prosecution loading for the whole family

ProsecutionFamilyPerf

●US prosecution data now loads for the whole family automatically in the background, including granted, lapsed, and expired applications — not just pending ones.
●Each application shows a progress bar while its office actions are being downloaded and analysed, with stage labels so you can see exactly what is happening.
●Navigation works during a fetch: switching to another view or back again does not cancel the work in progress.

Accurate citation lists

Prosecution

●Court decisions and case law citations (such as "In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428") are no longer stored as prior art references.
●Citations cited only in double-patenting objections are kept off the Documents Cited summary table — they appear in the objection card where they belong, but do not pollute the prior-art reference list.
●Patent reference links now resolve correctly for verbose USPTO citation forms ("U.S. Patent No. 6,272,456", "US Patent Application Publication No. 2005/0027699") and EP citations with internal spaces ("EP 1 821 462 A1").

Reports no longer re-analysed on every load

Perf

●Fixed a bug where US applications that had already been analysed would be re-processed every time you opened the family. Reports already extracted are now correctly recognised and the idempotent skip works reliably.

2026-04-28

Smart search

●Search by patent number, applicant, or title — suggestions appear as you type, both on the public home page and in the Cmd+K palette inside the app. Enter picks the top match; arrow keys navigate the list.

Cleaner public site

●About, Changelog, and Terms pages unified under consistent marketing navigation and footer. Same look whether you arrive from the landing page or a direct link.
●New update pill on the home screen surfaces the latest changelog entry with a direct link.

Smarter search ordering

●Typing a publication number in the search bar now lists that publication first instead of burying it under unrelated applications that happen to share the same digit prefix.

Application-number focus across the app

●Pinned families and recent searches in the sidebar, home page and Cmd+K palette now show the canonical application number as the primary label, regardless of what you originally typed.
●The breadcrumb on a family page updates to the application number once the family loads — so bookmarks and shared links always reference a consistent identifier.
●The family overview header shows both the application number and the primary publication number side by side.
●Typeahead suggestions show both numbers labelled with App. and Pub. so it's clear which one matched your search.

Family titles in Pinned and Recent

Family

●Pinned and Recent items now show the family title underneath the application number — easier to recognise a matter at a glance. Hover to see the full title in a tooltip.

Cleaner download filenames

PerfData

●Excel and PDF exports now use the canonical application number with today's date in the filename — works on every operating system and sorts predictably.

Lighter social link previews

●When you share a Scatter link on Slack, iMessage, Discord or anywhere else, the preview image now uses the same cream background as the public site instead of dark slate.

Tour polish

Onboarding

●The onboarding tour highlight now lands on the correct element immediately when stepping forward or back, instead of lagging a moment behind the card text.

2026-04-27

Cleaner landing experience

●Reworked the public home page with a clearer story of what Scatter does and where it's heading. Sharper navigation, alternating product surfaces, AU/EP/US-anchored examples throughout. Better link previews when shared on Slack, X, iMessage and Discord.

2026-04-26

Better dates on examination reports

Prosecution

●When you upload an examination report as a PDF, Scatter now extracts mailing dates more reliably across the whole document, infers chronological vs reverse-chronological ordering automatically, and prompts you to fill in any missing dates with a quick form. Round numbering updates as soon as you save.

Fewer duplicate citations

Prosecution

●When an examination report references the same document under more than one publication number (for example a WO publication paired with its national-phase translation), Scatter now keeps both forms together cleanly in the Documents Cited list, with each linked separately.

2026-04-25

Prosecution grid polish

Prosecution

●Sticky column headers when scrolling the round grid. Cleaner layout for the application column — office, status, dates and actions all read top-down without awkward wrapping. Side-panel tabs slide their underline between tabs instead of jumping.

2026-04-23

Prosecution round grid — full overhaul

Prosecution

●Each objection now reads as a coloured card. Claim ranges collapse cleanly (cl. 1-4, 7), citation chips show a reasoning excerpt on hover, and clicking a card opens a side panel with every objection in that round. Universal objection types (Novelty, Inventive step, Sufficiency, Clarity, Support) used consistently across AU, EP, and US — no jurisdiction-specific section numbers in the UI.

Resizeable side panels

●Drag the left edge of the prosecution or claims side panel to set your preferred width. Setting persists across sessions.

2026-04-21

Smoother keyboard navigation and accessibility

A11y

●Tab bars (view switcher, side panel tabs, claims publication tabs) now support arrow-key navigation with proper focus management. Mobile sidebar drawer slides cleanly with focus trapping. Scrollbars across the app match the theme.

2026-04-20

Pinned families

●Star a family from the page header to keep it pinned on the home page and in the sidebar. Pinned families persist across browser sessions, so your active matters stay one click away.

First-run onboarding tour

Onboarding

●New users see a short coach-mark tour on the family page (view switcher, filters, pin, download, search). View-aware: the diagram and prosecution views each get their own short tour. Replay any time from the command palette.

Shareable URLs

●Filter selections, sort order, and active view (Table / Diagram / Prosecution) now live in the URL. Click Share and the link reproduces your exact state — useful for sending a colleague straight to the right view.

Unified Open side panel

●Per-row History, Claims, and Analyse buttons collapsed into a single Open button. Clicking it launches a side panel with three tabs: Prosecution, Claims, and History — switch between them without losing your place.

Inline claims viewer

●A new Claims tab in the side panel pulls the published claims for any family member straight from EPO. Multi-publication tabs let you toggle between A1, A2, B1 etc. for the same application.

Command palette enhancements

●Cmd+K (Ctrl+K) now does more than search: toggle dark mode, jump home, view changelog or shortcuts, clear recent searches, pin or unpin the current family. Arrow keys wrap around the list.

Loading and feedback polish

PerfData

●Family fetches now show stage-aware messages ("Searching INPADOC...", "Still searching, large families take a moment...", "EPO OPS is slow right now, hang tight..."). Recent searches and examples spin a small icon while loading instead of swapping to plain text. Export buttons show progress while running. Share button confirms with a check icon and "Link copied" label.

Tooltips on icon-only buttons

●Hover any icon button (filter, export, theme toggle, sidebar collapse) to see what it does. Each carries a screen-reader label too.

Empty states across views

●When filters yield no matches in any view (Table / Diagram / Prosecution), you see a friendly empty state with a one-click Reset button instead of a blank canvas.

Animations and visual polish

●Filter bar slides open and closed instead of appearing instantly. Active view tab uses a sliding pill animation. Sort indicators rotate smoothly when toggling direction. Focus rings now visible across all interactive elements in light and dark mode.

Better error handling

●Family fetches give up after 40 seconds and show a clear "Try again" UI with a tailored message (timeout vs network vs server error). Prosecution extraction has a 90-second timeout with the same pattern. App-wide error boundaries mean a render error in one panel no longer crashes the whole page.

Status taxonomy unified

Status

●The seven status types (granted, expired, revoked, lapsed, examination, filed, provisional) now use the same colours and labels everywhere — table badges, diagram nodes, dashboard bar, Excel exports. Dark-mode contrast pass to make sure every pairing meets WCAG AA.

Microcopy sweep

●Consistent "Download" verb across export buttons. Em dashes removed from in-app copy where natural punctuation read better. Universal terminology throughout — Novelty, Inventive step, Sufficiency, Clarity rather than jurisdiction-specific section numbers.

2026-04-19

Header and dashboard restructure

●View switcher (Table / Diagram / Prosecution) moved into the page header as a centred segmented control. Filter funnel and export buttons consolidated into the dashboard's title row, saving a row of vertical space.

Filter bar polish

●Filter pills restyled for a cleaner look in both light and dark mode.

Table cleanup

Family

●Removed redundant Copy and chevron icons from the family table — click-to-expand still works.

Status badges include date inline

Status

●Legal-status date now sits inside the status badge instead of as a separate column value.

2026-04-16

Major UI overhaul

●New collapsible sidebar with logo, search trigger, navigation, recent searches, theme toggle, and feedback widget.
●Cmd+K (Ctrl+K) command palette: search recent history, with arrow-key navigation and loading feedback.
●New app home page tailored for returning users.
●Responsive table: card layout on mobile, fixed-percentage columns on desktop. Status text wraps; long titles truncate with click-to-expand.
●Keyboard shortcuts overlay (press ? anywhere).
●404 page, error boundary, dynamic OpenGraph link previews per family.
●Terms and privacy page added.
●Print stylesheet — clean printouts of any family page.
●Dark-mode-aware toasts.

2026-04-14

Family tree diagram polish

Family

●Hub co-parent centring: when one parent feeds multiple branches (e.g. a continuation hub with a provisional and a divisional), the hub now sits centred between its co-parents.
●Arrowheads now visible on edges into junction nodes for clearer flow direction.
●Feedback widget gained a dark-mode treatment.

2026-04-10

Cleaner family tree diagrams

Family

●Multi-parent children (e.g. continuations of two priorities) now route through a small junction node, producing cleaner orthogonal arrows and tighter spacing.
●All child nodes (PCT included) now show arrowheads.
●Diagram zoom controls and minimap match the slate dark mode of the rest of the app.

2026-04-09

Earlier access to dossier links

●Dossier links (EP Register, USPTO File Wrapper, IP Australia AusPat, WIPO Patentscope) now appear alongside the upload and retrieve buttons before any extraction is triggered — useful when you want the official source first.

Prosecution tab empty state

Prosecution

●Empty prosecution panels now explain how to populate them (upload a PDF or use Retrieve from USPTO).

About page polish

●Tagline cleanup; AI framing aligned with the rest of the site (Scatter extracts; the attorney decides).

2026-04-08

Prosecution spreadsheet export — much better

ProsecutionUI

●Export now produces a layout that mirrors the on-screen prosecution table: one column per round, one row per objection, with round labels matching "First Report / Action" etc. Objection types are bold; citation labels are live hyperlinks straight to the patent office or NPL source. Filename is now prosecution-{application number}.xlsx.

Live links for non-patent literature

●NPL citations now link out: DOI lookup tried first, then arXiv, then a Google Scholar search as a fallback.

Inline expand for objection text

Prosecution

●Click any objection in the round grid to expand the full objection text in place. When the original report text was captured, a "View full report" link opens the complete examination report in a modal.

Smoother family page navigation

Family

●The brief blank flash between clicking a result and the family page rendering is gone — the layout stays in place while data loads.

2026-04-07 (session 2)

PDF upload and US retrieve directly on the prosecution tab

ProsecutionPerfData

●Each row in the prosecution tab now has its own "Choose PDF" and "Retrieve from USPTO" buttons. No need to bounce back to the family table to upload an exam report.
●"Retrieve" relabelled "Retrieve from USPTO" with a download icon and hidden for non-US offices (which need PDF upload instead).

2026-04-07

Cleaner citation storage

Prosecution

●Citations now stored as a normalised list per application with a separate junction to objections. Cross-application deduplication is now done at the data layer, so the Documents Cited summary always shows the canonical set without UI workarounds.

Scanned PDFs supported

●Examination reports that come through as scanned images (no embedded text) are now processed automatically. Upload works the same way; the system handles scanned PDFs without any extra steps.

Better EP report splitting

●EP examination reports are now split into separate rounds more reliably, even when the date field on the page is blank or in a non-standard format. Common DD.MM.YYYY page-header dates are also recognised for mailing date extraction.

Family export upgrade

Family

●Family Excel export now has status colours filled into the status column matching the on-screen badges. The application you searched for is bolded.

Upload validation

StatusPerf

●Uploading a PDF now checks the file actually contains the application number for the row it's being uploaded against, preventing wrong-document mistakes.

2026-04-02

Prosecution tab improvements

Prosecution

●Objections without prior art citations (Clarity, Support etc.) now show in round cards with their objection text instead of being hidden.
●Documents Cited list now respects the office filter on the family.
●Prosecution tab auto-populates from previously stored data without needing to click Retrieve.
●"Clear all data" properly clears both the database and the in-memory cache.
●Citations are deduplicated within and across rounds at write time, so the Documents Cited list never shows dupes.

Citation display polish

Prosecution

●NPL references truncated to 60 characters in tables with full text on hover. Patent and NPL citations sorted alphanumerically by label. Smart quotes normalised to straight quotes so "Smith et al." and "Smith et al." don't appear as two separate rows.

Excel export from both tabs

●Both the family Table tab and the Prosecution tab have an Export button. Prosecution export produces two sheets: Documents Cited and Prosecution Grid.

Share button moved

●Share button moved into the results page header so it's clear it shares the page URL, not a specific tab.

2026-04-01

Multi-report PDF upload

PerfData

●Upload a PDF containing multiple examination reports (e.g. an AU first and second report combined) and Scatter splits them into separate "First Report / Action" and "Second Report / Action" columns automatically. Round numbers are assigned by mailing date, so uploading a later report first still orders correctly.

Round column labels

Prosecution

●Round columns now read "First / Second / Third / ... Report / Action" instead of "Round N".

Bulk clear

●"Clear all data" button removes all stored prosecution data for the family in one click.

Auto-updating "Latest update" card

●The "Latest update" card on the public home page now pulls from the live changelog at build time.

2026-03-31 (session 2)

More accurate citation extraction

ProsecutionData

●Primary references identified only by author shorthand (e.g. "Nishio") were previously dropped. Cross-reference resolution now back-fills these from the report's reference list, so they show up in the right objection card.
●Tuned the AI extraction backend for better speed and accuracy on prosecution documents.

Real progress bar

●The loading bar during prosecution analysis now shows actual stage progress: fetching documents → downloading → segmenting objections → extracting citations (e.g. "2 of 4 objections"). Replaces the previous indeterminate spinner.

Confidence indicators

●Citations with no source excerpt (or a very short one) get an amber indicator with a tooltip explaining it may be an extraction error — easier to scan for review.

2026-03-31

Citation tracking across the family

ProsecutionFamily

●Prior art citations from any prosecution analysis now save automatically. A new Citations tab shows every reference cited across the family — applications it was cited in, type (patent / NPL), and how many times. References are normalised on ingest so "US 8,123,456 B2" and "US8123456B2" don't appear as two separate records.

Multiple panels open at once

●Open a prosecution panel for one row, then open another for a different row, and they stay independent. Each has its own close button.

2026-03-29

Prosecution intelligence shipped (Phase 2)

Prosecution

●US office actions are now retrieved automatically — Scatter pulls the full text and runs the extraction without any upload step.
●AI reads each office action and pulls out the prior art citations relied on in rejections, with reference label (D1, D2, "Smith"…), document ID, objection type (Novelty, Inventive step, etc.), and claims affected.
●Direct download links to the original office action PDFs from the USPTO file wrapper, accessible alongside the extracted summary.

Upload-based analysis (any office)

Perf

●Upload an examination report PDF for AU, EP, WO or any other office where automatic retrieval isn't available, and Scatter runs the same extraction.

Clickable links to cited prior art

Prosecution

●Every cited patent document is a clickable link straight to Google Patents.

Office-specific dossier link labels

●File Wrapper (US), EP Register (EP), AusPat (AU), Patentscope (WO) — each office's dossier link now uses the proper local name.

Changelog created

●This is where new builds get logged from now on. The home page surfaces the latest entry with a direct link.

Earlier sessions

Phase 1 — Patent family explorer

Family

●Search by application or publication number to fetch the full INPADOC family.
●Family table with seven status badges (granted, expired, revoked, lapsed, examination, filed, provisional). Provisional applications inferred from priority chain analysis.
●Multi-select filters for office and status.
●Family tree diagram with landscape and portrait layouts and vector PDF export.
●Dark mode.
●CSV export.
●Global Dossier links for IP5 offices and beyond.
●Deep links into Espacenet, eDossier, AusPat.