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This page contains notifications of upcoming content changes. For more information about past changes, please see the Release Notes. Past notifications of required replacements received from our data sources can be found here. |
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January 2020: IFI is changing the rules for applicant/assignee name harmonization
In June 2019, IFI began implementing a new rule in which the ifi-standardized-name does not change when the patentee organization changes its name. New names will now be available as ifi-standardized-name-current in the ifi-integrated-content container.
For example: In 2017, Horsehead Corporation officially changed its name to American Zinc Recycling Corp.
EP-1799929-A2 has Horsehead Corp. as the applicant delivered by the EPO. For this document in CLAIMS Direct we find:
ifi-integrated-content | Old Rules | New Rules |
| American Zinc Recycling Corp | Horsehead Corp |
| American Zinc Recycling Corp | American Zinc Recycling Corp |
During the process of implementing the new rules, some records lost the relationship to the new names. For example, EP-1799929-A2 currently shows "Horsehead Corp" in ifi-standardized-name as well as ifi-standardized-name-current.
Switching to the new rules will be an ongoing process. Starting next week, we will be reloading those ifi-integrated-content containers affected by the issue described above.
It is important to mention that IFI does not consider a change in the legal form of an entity to be a name change (Inc/LLC, SL/SA, AG/GmbH, etc.). In these cases, the ifi-standardized-name will change in accordance with the old rules.
Note that in the Ultimate Owner service (currently in beta), new and former names will be available as child names of the same ultimate parent.
August 2019: CPCI (CPC-International) replaces CPC and CPCNO
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