Page History

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Table of Contents

April 2024: Thailand data delayed

Data processing for TH was recently on hold due to technical changes at the source. Processing has now resumed and we are working on delivering the maximum available data in our upcoming delivery. The provider expects the data to be fully caught up in June 2024.

April 2024: Five full text countries added; Unitary Patent Snapshots and flags loaded

In the past few weeks, we have added five countries to the CLAIMS Direct Premium Plus full text collection, bringing our total number of full text countries to 55. The new countries include:

• PH (Philippines)
• SA (Saudi Arabia)
• SG (Singapore)
• UA (Ukraine)
• ZA (South Africa)

We have also finished loading Snapshots to all Unitary Patent C0 records as well as the ep-up-requested flags, which indicate whether Unitary Patent protection has been requested for EP-B records.

February 2024: IFI Snapshots added to Unitary Patent C0 records

We will soon be loading IFI Snapshots for Unitary Patent (UP) C0 records. The C0 marker Snapshots will include the same attributes as those in EP granted records (kind code B*), except that the list of countries will only include those participating in the UP at the time of registration. The status of individual UP countries will all be the same, and the overall status of the UP will have the same attributes as the overall status of EP records, e.g., “Active”, “Expired-Fee Related”, “Expired-Lifetime”, “Revoked”, etc. A new status of “In-force UP" will be used for active UP-participating countries. See Case 4 in IFI Patent Status for examples.

January 2024: Five countries added to full text collection; Japanese back file extended

In the past few weeks, we have added five countries to the CLAIMS Direct full text collection including:

• HR (Croatia)
• GR (Greece)
• IT (Italy)
• NO (Norway)
• TR (Türkiye)

We have also extended the full text coverage of the JP back file to 1983. Details for these changes are available in our Data Coverage Table.

January 2024: Australian annotated data on hold

We have had issues with receiving the AU annotated data starting in September 2023. We are working to restore this data flow as soon as possible.

November 2023: British full-text delivery suspended

At the end of October, the UK IPO communicated that they have technical issues in their data deliveries. Last week we received confirmation that resolving the issue is going to take some time. The UK IPO is looking for alternative delivery mechanisms. In the meantime, IFI is also evaluating other options to get the full text of GB applications.

November 2023: DOCDB rekey of Austrian records

In July, DOCDB began a rekey of AT records that may affect CLAIMS Direct clients.

According to DOCDB, “AT T publications published before December 31,1994 will now have a T1 kind code, and the sequence number will have a leading ‘E’”. This means that CLAIMS Direct records with the old publication numbers will be deleted, and new records with the rekeyed publication numbers will be added. For example, AT-489945-T will be marked as deleted and AT-E489945-T1 will be added.

The DOCDB notice is available here: https://forums.epo.org/at-t-publication-rekey-visible-in-ops-and-other-tools-data-as-of-week-12946.

October 2023: Changes to Standardized Names

In order to improve consistency, we have simplified our rules for standardized naming of academic institutions. Previously, we created new names for different departments, campuses, and other divisions of the same parent institution. As it is now more common for applicants to file for patents under the name of the parent institution, we are consolidating our standardized names to reflect this practice, with the exception of institutions that are financially independent entities. We are currently reloading standardized names affected by this consolidation.

Two new categories are being added to the Names service: “Healthcare” for hospitals and healthcare centers, and “Nonprofit”. The “Academic” category will also soon be changing to “Education”.

September 2023: Standardized Names and Ultimate Owners added for Nikkei 225 companies

We have completed verification of the Standardized Names and Ultimate Owners for all companies in the Nikkei 225 which own patents.

August 2023: Unitary Patent data

In July, we began loading Unitary Patent (UP) data from DOCDB along with associated legal event data from INPADOC. Learn more about how we are handling UP data in our new blog on Unitary Patents and the Unified Patent Court.

August 2023: IFI CLAIMS Direct required update

The issuing patent authority has provided an updated PDF for the document below. Therefore, we have reloaded the PDF in our Attachment collection. Please ensure that you update this PDF within your Attachment cache as well. Bulk Attachment clients will receive the updated PDF automatically within your regularly scheduled attachments.

January 2023: Loading rich citations

We have begun loading rich citations data into CLAIMS Direct. We expect this process to increase the volume of data being loaded. However, this improvement will present non-patent citations in a structured format, improving access to this information.

CLAIMS Direct incorporated the schema change associated with rich citations in version 2.5, which can be seen here: https://docs.ificlaims.com/display/CDVDP/XML+DTD+and+Schemas.

Information about the enriched data that will be available through rich citations can be found here: https://docs.ificlaims.com/display/CDVDP/technical-data+citations.

January 2023: Errors in PCT numbering

WIPO has experienced a software error which caused the numbers for initial publications in the first three PCT publication batches of 2023 to be allocated following on from the numbers used in 2022. As a result, PCT numbers in the January 5, 12, and 19 publications run as follows: 

According to WIPO, numbering will resume from WO 2023/000001 on January 26 and publications in December will skip the range used in January.

December 2022: English translations added to many non-full text records

In December, we completed the machine translation to English of titles and abstracts which had only been provided by DOCDB in their original language. We did not previously provide translations of these records because they did not include full text. These translations will now be available to all subscription levels.

September 2022: Completed loading of Japanese Standardized Names

In September, we completed the data load of JP standardized names for Premium and Premium Plus subscriptions. Although the data load is complete, there are still some JP records which do not have an IFI Name, primarily due to difficulties with translations. We are working to fill in these gaps.

August 2022: Identification of Individuals in IFI Standardized Names

To better identify records in which the applicant or assignee is the inventor or any other person rather than an entity, we have begun flagging the IFI Standardized Name as “Individual”. For example:

<ifi-parties>
  <ifi-standardized-name>
    <addressbook>
      <name>Individual</name>
    </addressbook>
  </ifi-standardized-name>
</ifi-parties>

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February 2020: Availability of Google translations and improved Chinese data

We are currently in the process of adding English translations from Google Translate to our entire full text backfile with the exception of China, which is receiving improved English translations from a separate source. This may cause query results to differ over time as old translations are replaced.

The replacement involves an aggressive load schedule but will result in higher-quality text and faster availability of translations. For more information about the improvements the new translations will bring, see Translations.

The new translations are already present in our frontfile and are being added to the backfile one year at a time, working backward from the present. For specific progress, check the Translation Reload Status or contact support@ificlaims.com.

In addition to the full text fields, the new Chinese data source also affects names, keywords, legal status, and other fields, leading to greater accuracy in searches directed to a number of different fields. For more information, see Chinese Data Improvements.

January 2020: IFI is changing the rules for applicant/assignee name harmonization

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The EPO has announced that CPC-International will be rolled out starting with the next DocDB DOCDB data delivery. From week 2019/36 onward all CPC classifications will have classification-scheme=“CPCI”. Classification-schemes “CPC” and “CPCNO” will be discontinued from that week onward. In CLAIMS Direct we have added the CPCI value to the schema attribute in classification-cpc (see the Release Notes for more information).

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• CPCI is maintained at the family level. When there has been a change to the CPCI picture for a given family, every member in the simple patent family (i.e., all members with the same family ID) will be updated.
• In classification scheme=CPCI, classification symbols will be allocated by more than one authority. When different authorities have allocated the same classification symbol, the CPCI picture for one publication will contain duplicate classification symbols.
• Duplicate classification symbols for one publication will be made unique by a two-letter authority-code. To this purpose, the element <generating-office> is populated by DocDB DOCDB for every authority allocating CPCI classifications, and also for the EPO and the USPTO. In CLAIMS Direct XML, the authority-code can be found in positions 41-42 in the CPC.

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In the next few days some CS and CZ records will change the format of their patent numbers following DocDB DOCDB recommendations. Some of the changes will include moving the year to the end for CZ publication numbers dating prior to 2000 and suppressing embedded zeroes for CZ publication numbers, applications, and priority numbers dating from 2000 onward. The following table illustrates the changes.

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In the context of improving consistency in numbering formats, the EPO has advised that the DocDB DOCDB XML delivery of week 29/2018 will include a change of number format in applications and priorities with authority-code "AT" and kind-code "U".

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