What Alan wrote about patent application vs publication number
http://tinyurl.com/lhdfp6
was recently discussed with European colleagues because in INPADOC and other databases for certain countries there is no a standard "publication date".
For example, in GB A0 publications, this refers to the date of publication of the Gazette of the unpublished (sorry!) application data.
For Italy, particularly in case of recent applications, you find a "publication date" which is three months after the application.
This is the conventional date of release from the military committee which can decide in this period whether the procedure can proceed or must be stopped for military interest, but in most cases after the three months period (actually 90 days under the Italian IP code), the application text/drawing is not accessible to the public.
Only in (quite rare) case of declared advanced accessibility the text/drawing is available to the public before the usual 18 months.
Besides, no official bulletin/gazette is published in Italy since thirty years about, therefore "publication date" and "publication number" indicated in the databases have no real meaning, while "application date/number" seems to be more appropriate.
Best regards
Guido Moradei
Quaestio - Patent Information Partners
www.quaestio.it
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Comments (1)
Jul 08, 2009
Alan Engel says:
WIPO's databases are also organized by application number. The weekly downloads ...WIPO's databases are also organized by application number. The weekly downloads do contain some secondary collections organized by publication number but the collections as a whole are organized by application number.