Generally speaking, a patent family is a group of patents which, like a family, are all related to each other, in this case by way of the priority or priorities of a particular patent document.
In PatentInspiration a patent family is defined as comprising all patents having exactly the same priority or combination of priorities (simple family)
In this case, document D1 is the only document in family P1, D2 and D3 belong to family P1-P2, D4 belongs to family P2-P3, and D5 to family P3.
| Document D1 | Priority P1 | FAMILY P1 | ||
| Document D2 | Priority P1 | Priority P2 | FAMILY P1-P2 | |
| Document D3 | Priority P1 | Priority P2 | FAMILY P1-P2 | |
| Document D4 | Priority P2 | Priority P3 | FAMILY P2- P3 | |
| Document D5 | Priority P3 | FAMILY P3 |
The INPADOC patent family is not implemented in PatentInspiration. The INPADOC patent family is defined as comprising all the documents sharing directly or indirectly (e.g. via a third document) at least one priority. This includes all the patent documents resulting from a patent application submitted as a first filing with a patent office and from the same patent application filed within the priority year with a patent office in any other country.