Britain’s official patent gazette has taken on a new electronic format.
Most patent offices issue (often only on the Web) a patent gazette, usually every week or month. The format varies, but typically they consist of brief data on newly published and granted patents. Sometimes a summary and drawing is also included.
Britain used to have the Patents & Designs Journal, which has been published since 1854 (the title has varied). Now renamed the Patents Journal, it can be searched electronically in all the weekly issues since the 5 March 2008.
It has a big advantage over the data in the free Web databases. Data there is normally that in the applications published 18 months after the initial “priority” date, or the later grants for the same inventions. Britain, almost uniquely, releases brief data about an invention several weeks after the British filing. This means that about 17 months before the application is published a little information on intentions is available. If the applicant was from outside the UK and claimed “priority” then the time interval is about 11 months.
In 2006 these amounted to about 17,000 applications made by British residents and about 8,000 by foreign residents (but some of both categories would have been refilings for various reasons). This information has never been available on a free database before.
The Searchable Patents Journal site defaults to displaying these new filings. Data available is name (company or individual), title (often rather short), date of filing, priority if claimed (country, date, and filing number), and the filing number. Hence the 2 April 2008 issue tells us that Karen Louise Harrison filed a patent entitled “Champagne moments” on the 21 February 2008, with the number GB0803157.7. If a priority date is claimed then publication normally occurs 18 months after that date (there can be exceptions).
As British residents are required to file first in Britain, even if they only want a foreign patent, the value of this data is to those wanting information on competitors is considerable. The approximate nature of the invention, and when it is likely to be published (and under what number), will be known. Many applicants will in fact use the European or PCT systems to publish, and most big foreign companies file in Europe to get British protection, so the information there is more limited.
Other areas such as newly published applications or grants, lapsings and expirations can also be searched. The current issue only is searched unless tabs are changed to request the entire series since the 5 March. As time goes by this database will become more valuable for searching as well as for seeing new data.
There is a site for downloading, where specific fields of data such as all new filings can be downloaded as PDFs or XMLs for specific weeks.
If the current status of a known filing or published number is wanted, then a Patents Status Enquiry database already exists.
There is also an archive of the Patents & Designs Journal since August 1998, which replaces the old website for the journal.
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