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.
August 2019: CPCI (CPC-International) replaces CPC and CPCNO
The EPO has announced that CPC-International will be rolled out starting with the next 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).
Main features related to this change:
- 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 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.
April 2019: Change in number formats for Czechoslovakia/Czechia
In the next few days some CS and CZ records will change the format of their patent numbers following 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.
| Country Code | Kind/Year | Old Format | New Format |
|---|---|---|---|
| CS | A1, A2, A3 | YYnnnnn | (nnnnn)nYY |
| CZ | publications before 2000 | YYnnnnn | (nnnn)nYY |
| CZ | publications from 2000 onward | CCYYnnnn | CCYY(nnn)n |
| CZ | applications and priorities from 2000 onward | CCYYnnnn | CCYY(nnn)n |
More information will be added to the release notes as we incorporate these changes.
December 2018: Rekey of IN apps
Please be aware that we rekeyed some IN records in order to solve a duplicate issue. You will find more information in the Release Notes.
December 2018: IFI CLAIMS Direct required update
The issuing patent authority has requested the removal of particular content from the official record in the document(s) below. Therefore, we have reloaded the document(s) in our databases. Please ensure that you update them within your applications as well.
| UCID | CLAIMS Direct Replacement Date | Load ID |
|---|---|---|
| DE-102017104529-A1 | November 27, 2018 | 337359 |
September 2018: Coverage of EP A4 documents
EP kind code A4 documents cover the supplementary search reports as issued by the EPO following PCT applications entering the EP regional phase. Until now these documents were not fully integrated into the normal EPO publication flow of A and B publications.
Now A4 data is available in CLAIMS Direct both in XML format as well as PDF. See the Release Notes for more detailed information.
July 2018: Expanding PDF coverage
In the last few weeks, we have added full document PDFs to the CA, KR, RU, and WO collections. See the Release Notes for more detailed information.
July 2018: Timeliness of Japanese data improved
At IFI we care about data quality and know how important it is for our clients to have access to the latest data as quickly as possible. Today we are happy to announce that we have improved the average timeliness of JP data availability. This data will now be made available to our clients 2-3 days after the publication date, a vast improvement over the previous delivery schedule of 2-3 weeks.
June 2018: Change in number formatting for Austrian applications and priorities
In the context of improving consistency in numbering formats, the EPO has advised that the 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".
Applications and priorities with a filing-date from 2000 onward will be re-keyed from the old format n(nnnn)yy to the new format n(nnnn)CCyy.
The correction will have an impact on the following CLAIMS Direct records:
• 11,599 applications with authority-code "AT" – triggered by the correction of the application-numbers
• 20,886 applications for a variety of authority-codes – triggered by the correction of the priority-numbers