German (DE) application and patent publication number changes as of Jan. 2004

The German patent office (Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt) will extend their application numbering format by January 1st, 2004 in order to provide for an increasing number of applications. This applies for all applications filed from 01 Jan 2004 onwards. The corresponding publication numbers will adopt the same format. For the announcement made by the German patent office, see:

http://www.dpma.de/veroeffentlichungen/mitteilungen/mittlg2003_03.html

The new numbers will follow these rules:

• the first two digits describe the kind of property right applied for
• the next four digits correspond to the application year
• the next six digits are the serial application number
• the last digit is a check digit.

Relevant kinds of property right (first two digits and their meaning):

10   national application
11   PCT application with designation DE
12   supplementary protection certificate
 
20   utility model application
21   utility model application from PCT application
 
30   trade mark application
 
50   EP patents for DE (Germany) in German language
 
60   EP patents for DE (Germany) in English or French language

STN will accommodate the new application and patent publication number formats in unadulterated form. In order to accomplish this the display layout will have to be changed slightly since the new numbers carry two additional characters.

The actual display layout and indexing of the numbers will be as follows:

Patent Number STN Display:
DE NNYYYYNNNNNN

Patent Number Derwent Display:
DENNYYYYNNNNNN

Patent Number Index:
DENNYYYYNNNNNN

Application Number STN Display:
DE YYYY-NNYYYYNNNNNN

Application Number Derwent Display:
YYYYDE-NNYYYYNNNNNN

Application Number Index:
DEYYYY-NNYYYYNNNNNN (the Derwent format will be made searchable as well)