The UK Intellectual Property Office has a new Patents Publication Enquiry page for both A and B documents. The coverage is for publications from January 2007.
Previously, British B (granted) patents were not available on the Web other than an awkward trick. When the PDF of a British A appeared on the Espacenet page, you could add a B onto the end of the number where it first appeared within the URL (it is there twice). Then click to enter the URL, and, sometimes, the B document magically appeared.
The British B documents used to be received by the British Library as paper, but then changed to CD-ROMs. This supply will cease with the end of November, and this new site will be the source for the documents.
You can either insert a British patent number, or select a publication date (always a Wednesday). If the latter, you can also opt for all documents or for A only or for B only. Clicking on the patent number takes you to the status register and to choices of the PDF or to Espacenet-format entries for the A and B documents. Alternatively, you can simply opt at the search results page directly for the PDF, zip file or the Espacenet format. Or the gazette, if you wish.
In theory, any modified documents will be available as well as the normal publications. This means that this site should be the one to choose when A documents, too, within the date range are chosen, as more than one document may be offered. The site is updated with new material no earlier than 13.00 UK time every Wednesday.
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