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Examples and Intellectual Property Offices Practices

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Part 7 of the Handbook on Intellectual Property Information and Documentation

This part contains surveys which cover different stages of the life-cycle of IP documents. They focus on various aspects of processing and publication of patent, trademark and industrial design documentation by the intellectual property offices. They are a source of information on the practices implemented worldwide and the specific characteristics of IP documents.

Table of contents

Representation of calendar dates

Numbering systems

  • Part 7.2.2: Survey of numbering systems used, or intended to be used, by industrial property offices with regard to applications, published documents and registered rights (April 2021)
    Previous version: June 2001
  • Part 7.2.3: Numbering systems and date formats introduced or planned to be applied with regard to the arrival of the year 2000 (January 2000)
  • Part 7.2.4: Survey on the presentation of priority application numbers (December 2018) | Annex
  • Part 7.2.5: Survey on application numbering systems (June 2013) - IPO responses | collated results
  • Part 7.2.6: Numbering of applications and priority applications - current practices (September 2017)
  • Part 7.2.7: Numbering of applications and priority applications - former practices (September 2017)

Examples and kinds of patent documents

  • Part 7.3.1: Examples and kinds of patent documents listed according to code (March 2020)
  • Part 7.3.2: Inventory of kinds of patent documents listed according to the issuing industrial property office (November 2022)

Corrections, alterations and supplements relating to patent information

  • Part 7.4.1: Survey concerning correction procedures in patent offices (December 2009)
  • Part 7.4.2: Examples concerning correction procedures of patent offices (December 2009)

Bibliographic information in patent gazettes

  • Part 7.6: Survey of bibliographic information contained in patent gazettes and in current indexes inserted in patent gazettes or published separately in association with patent gazettes (December 1990)

Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPCs)

Citation practices relating to patent information

  • Part 7.9: Survey concerning citation practices in industrial property offices (December 2008)

Codes used by intellectual property offices

  • Part 7.10: Survey of practices in industrial property offices regarding codes used for internal purposes or individual use (January 2009)

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) practices

Use of WIPO Standards

  • Part 7.12: Survey on the use of WIPO Standards - Wiki

Mapping of national/regional IP legal status events to Standard events

  • Part 7.13.1: Mapping tables of national/regional patent legal status events to the events of WIPO Standard ST.27 (January 2019) -
  • Part 7.13.2: Mapping tables of national/regional industrial design legal status events to the events of WIPO Standard ST.87 (April 2020) -
  • Part 7.13.3: Mapping tables of national/regional trademark legal status events to the events of WIPO Standard ST.61 (July 2022) -

Authority File of published patent documents provided by Offices

Identifiers for Persons and Entities

Practices for Visual Elements

Public Access to Patent Information

Practices for digital transformation