How to Read a Patent Numbers for the Date

Chocolate-brown & Michaels

How do I read a patent? - the Front end Page

Let's wait at the front folio of a typical patent. We'll discuss each department on the front page, from left to right and top to bottom, identifying the sections by the number code in parenthesis earlier the section. These numbers, called "INID Codes", are used universally on all printed patents around the earth, and then that you can place the information elements on a patent even if you do not speak the language. A consummate list of these codes is bachelor on this site. If any of the terms used in this explanation are unfamiliar, you lot will probably find them defined in our Patent Glossary.

Sample patent front folio, from Patent Number six,763,791

(12)Type of Certificate: for an issued patent, this will just read "United States Patent" (or, if appropriate, "Usa Blueprint Patent" or "United states of america Found Patent"). Other possibilities are:

• "Patent Application Publication" - a published patent awarding. For more information on patent application publication, see our Patents FAQ page
• "Reissued Patent" - this patent is based on another patent which was previously issued. See section (22) for the number and consequence date of that patent. The Reissue Patent has been examined and issued again with modifications to the claims.
• "Defensive Publication" or "Statutory Invention Registration"  - a publication made for the defensive purpose of preventing others from getting patents. Defensive Publications and SIRs practise not give any rights to exclude others from making, using or selling, as would a patent. SIRs were introduced in 1985, replacing the earlier Defensive Publication program, and were abolished (effective in March 2013) by the 2011 America Invents Act. The SIR program was never used very much - equally of September 2011, just 2,264 SIRs had been published in 26 years.

The last name of the inventor will usually be printed under the type of certificate. If there is more than than one inventor, this would exist the concluding name of the first inventor followed by "et. al" (Law Latin for "and others").

(10)Number:A utility patent volition have a number hither with no letter of the alphabet prefix (other than the "U.s." which denotes a The states publication). Other patent office documents have letter prefixes before the number which indicate the kind of document:

• AI - "Additional Improvement" patents, issued but between 1838 and 1861 - somewhat like to today's "Continuation in Part" applications
• B - Re-examination Document, issued subsequently a patent has issued and has been examined again by request of the patentee. The numeric portion of the number is the number of the patent to which the reexamination certificate refers. (For blueprint, establish, reissue patents, the Reexamination Certificate will include the normal designation letter of the alphabet - BD for design, BP for plant, etc.)
• "B" was also used as a prefix for documents published in the Trial Voluntary Protest Programme (TVPP) in the mid-1970'southward. Patent applications were partially published (abstract, drawing, cited references). Commencement "B" publication was in June, 1975, and 665 "B" documents were somewhen published.
• D or Des.- Design Patent - 14-yr term, covers ornamental appearance of a useful object.
• H - Statutory Invention Registration (SIR) (published 1985-2013)
• NP - non-patent literature (not actually published by the USPTO, but some databases may evidence this code)
• PP or Plt. - Plant Patent - covers certain plants.
• RE - Reissue patent (RD for reissued design patent, RP for reissued found patent)
• T - Defensive Publication (issued xi/5/68 through 5/5/87)
• Ten - Before 1836, patents were not numbered - they were but described in terms of their inventor and appointment ("Brown's 1814 patent"). Some 9,957 patents issued between 1790 and 1836 were retroactively assigned "X" series numbers in the order in which they were issued. A burn down at the Patent Function in 1836 destroyed near records of the "X" patents. Just 2,845 "X" series patents were reconstructed in the 1840's and are available today. Reissued "X" patents accept an "RX" prefix.

Just for general interest, here'due south how utility patent numbers work out over the years:

Utility Patent Number	Issue Appointment	Years Between	For
X1	July 31, 1790	-	Making Potash and Pearl Ash
1	July 13, 1836	46	Traction Wheels
1,000,000	August 8, 1911	75	Vehicle Tire
2,000,000	Apr 30, 1935	24	Vehicle Bicycle Construction
3,000,000	September 12, 1961	26	Automatic Reading System
4,000,000	December 28, 1976	15	Process for recycling asphalt-aggregate compositions
5,000,000	March xix, 1991	xv	Ethanol production by Escherichia coli strains co-expressing Zymomonas PDC and ADH genes
6,000,000	Dec seven, 1999	8	Extendible method and apparatus for synchronizing multiple files on ii different figurer systems
vii,000,000	February xiv, 2006	7	Polysaccharide Fibers
8,000,000	Baronial 16, 2011	five	Visual Prosthesis
9,000,000	April vii, 2015	3	Windshield washer conditioner
10,000,000	June 19, 2018	3	Coherent LADAR using intra-pixel quadrature detection

Documents also accept a letter or letter/number after the number. These announced on the face of the patent only afterward January two, 2001, just the codes may be used on all patents in some databases. To make things more complicated, the number later the alphabetic character is sometimes omitted.

• A1 - Published Patent Application - (if application is published more than once, A2 for 2d, etc.)
• A1 - pre-2001 patents
• A9 - Corrected published patent awarding
• B1 - Utility Patent, not previously published
• B2 - Utility Patent,  previously published as an application
• C1 - Reexamination Document (if more than ane document, and so C2, C3...) (B1 ...  is used for pre-2001 Reexamination Certificates)
• E1 - Reissue Patent
• F1 - Reexamination Certificate of a Reissued Patent (F2, F3... for additional certificates)(before 2001, this was C1, C2...)
• H - Statutory Invention Registration (SIR). - see to a higher place
• I1 - "X" patent (run across above)
• I2 - Reissued "X" patents
• I3 - Additional Improvement patent (run across higher up)
• I4 - Defensive Publication ("T" series)  (see above)
• I5 - Trial Voluntary Protest Plan (TVPP) documents (see to a higher place)
• P1- Plant Patent (earlier 2001)
• P1 - Published Found Patent application (after 1/2/2001 - additional publications are P4, P5...)
• P2 - Issued Plant Patent without pre-grant publication (after i/2/2001)
• P3 - Issued Institute Patent which was previously published (after one/ii/2001)
• S - Design Patent
• X6 - Patent - Post Consequence document (Dedication, Disclaimer, Cert. of Correction, etc.)
• X7 - Patent Assignment

(45)Date of Patent: the date the patent was issued by the USPTO. The patent is enforceable after this date, and in some cases the patent term is measured from this engagement (come across "How to make up one's mind if a patent is all the same in force"). Interesting trivia bespeak - this appointment is e'er a Tuesday.

(54)Title:This is the full title of the patent. In past years, information technology was the practise to give very vague and general titles to patents ("Tool"), just more recently titles tend to be adequately specific.

(75)Inventors: All of the inventors will be listed on the patent, usually with their metropolis of residence. Sometimes the inventor's full address will be listed.

(73)Assignee:If the patent is owned by a company (or an individual other than the inventor(s)), it will probably be listed here. Note that this information comes from the embrace canvass which was filed when the issue fee was paid, and may not be correct. Sometimes the attorney or inventor forgets to list an assignment, or chooses not to. Assignments which are recorded after the patent problems are never printed on the patent. To find out the latest assignment condition of a patent, see the Patent Assignments database at the USPTO website.

(*)Term extension find: Sometimes the term of the patent is extended due to delays in the USPTO processing across certain limits. If the term is extended, information technology will exist noted hither, as a certain number of days of extension (run into "How to determine if a patent is still in force"). In the case higher up, the term was not extended.

(21)Appl. No.:The identifying number of the awarding on which this patent was based - in this instance 10/198,476. The serial number is always 6 digits, assigned sequentially as applications are received past the USPTO,  prefixed past a two digit series number. When the number reaches 999,999, they starting time a new series. The series numbers are as follows:

02 Application filed earlier than January. 1, 1948
03 Application filed Jan.i, 1948 - December. 31, 1959
04 Application filed Jan. 1, 1960 - Dec. 31, 1969
05 Awarding filed Jan. one, 1970 - December. 31, 1978
06 Awarding filed Jan. i, 1979 - Dec. 31, 1986
07 Application filed Jan. one, 1987 - Dec. 31, 1992
08 Utility or Plant Application filed Jan. 1, 1993 - December. 31, 1997
09 Utility or Constitute Application filed January. one, 1998 - Dec. 4, 2001
x Utility or Establish Application filed December. four, 2001 - November 29, 2004, plus some "national stage" PCT applications filed after 2004 (the USPTO appears to take reserved some blocks of "10" series serial numbers for PCT applications, and connected to assign these numbers until they ran out).
11 Utility or Plant Application filed Nov 29, 2004-December 6, 2007
12 Utility or Plant Application filed from December half dozen, 2007 through December 17, 2010
thirteen Utility or Plant Application filed from Dec 17, 2010 through Feb 17, 2012
14 Utility or Plant Application filed from February 17, 2012  through January 2016
15 Utility or Found Application filed after January 2016 (current series)
29 Blueprint applications filed beginning in January 1993 (current serial)
35 Hague Understanding application (after May 13, 2015)
60 Conditional Awarding filed before 2008
61 Provisional Awarding filed in 2008-mid 2014
62 Provisional Application filed in mid-2014 or later (current serial)
90 Patent re-examination underEx Parte Reexamination procedure
95 Patent re-exam netherInter Partes Reexamination process

(22)Filing engagement: This is the engagement that this application was filed. Note that this is the actual filing date, not necessarily the "first Usa filing appointment" used for determining patent term. (see "How to determine if a patent is still in force")

(65)Prior Publication Data: If this patent was published while it was a pending application, the publication number and date will be listed here. In this example, the application was published on February 20, 2003 equally Published Awarding Number "US 2003/033,999 A1".  For more information on patent application publication, run across our Patents FAQ page

(60)Related US Awarding Data:and(thirty)Strange Priority Data:  If this application is related to any other applications or patents, they will exist listed here. In this example, patent 6,763,791 was based on Conditional Application number 60/312,140 filed on August 14, 2001.

The patent might be related to other not-conditional applications, for instance if information technology is a Continuation-in-Part of an earlier awarding or a US equivalent of an application offset filed in Japan. If so, the patent term would be measured from the filing appointment of the earliest non-conditional United states application listed here.(see "How to determine if a patent is still in strength") If any of the related applications have issued as US patents, that will exist indicated in this department besides.

(51)International Patent Classification All patents are classified by subject affair for ease of searching. The classifications in which a patent is indexed are listed in these sections. A given patent may be classified in whatsoever number of different locations, depending on the features of the invention.

 Nearly patent offices around the world use the International Patent Classification system, which is based on the function or performance of the invention. The classification system is divers in a hierarchical outline.  In this case, the patent is classified in subclass F01L 1/34, defined as follows:

F: MECHANICAL Engineering; LIGHTING; HEATING; WEAPONS; BLASTING
   F01: Machines or Engines
     F01L: Cyclically Operating Valves for Machines or Engines
        one/34: characterized by the provision of means for changing the timing of the valves without
            changing the duration of opening

(52)United states Patent Classification - CPC / USPC

Until January 1, 2015, the USPTO used its own US Patent Classification System (USPC) in which all inventions are first put in a grade having a three-digit number, and so in a numbered subclass nether the class. The subclasses are arranged in a hierarchical form, but not necessarily in numerical gild. The United states classification organisation is more based on structure than function. In this case, the patent was classified primarily in subclass 123/90.17, defined every bit follows:

123 INTERNAL-COMBUSTION ENGINES

ninety.1 Poppet Valve Operating Mechanism
90.15 . With means for varying timing
90.17 .. Camshaft or cam characteristics

In 2013 and 2014, the US Patent and Trademark Role and the European Patent Office coordinated their classification systems into a new system, called the "Cooperative Patent Classification" or "CPC". This nomenclature system is based loosely on the IPC, but is more detailed and easier to use in our opinion. The two patent offices have a website on the CPC which explains how information technology works. For the aforementioned case given above, the CPC for this type of invention would be defined every bit follows:

F: MECHANICAL Engineering science; LIGHTING; HEATING; WEAPONS; Diggings
     F01: MACHINES OR ENGINES IN Full general; ENGINE PLANTS IN
             GENERAL; STEAM ENGINES
         F01L: CYCLICALLY OPERATING VALVES FOR MACHINES OR
                      ENGINES
            F01L 1/ten: Valve-gear or valve arrangements, e.g. lift-valve gear
                 F01L1/34 •characterised by the provision of means for changing the timing of the valves without irresolute
                                   the duration of opening {and without affecting the magnitude of the valve lift
                    F01L1/344 • •changing the angular relationship betwixt crankshaft and camshaft
                       F01L1/3442 • • • using hydraulic chambers with variable book to transmit the rotating strength
                          F01L2001/34423 • • • • Details relating to the hydraulic feeding excursion
                            F01L2001/34426 • • • • •Oil control valves
                                  F01L2001/34433 • • • • • •Location oil command valves

As of Dec, 2014, the USPC officially stopped the use of the USPC in favor of the CPC. Newly issued patents later on January 2015 volition no longer show USPC nether the [52] INID code.

Knowing the US nomenclature(s) for a patent was important in searching in the USPTO database before 2015, because patents issued before 1976 were just indexed past number and US classification. Nonetheless, the USPTO has gone dorsum and reclassified all existing patents by CPC on their search system (as has the EPO in its Espacenet system). Equally of January ane, 2015, the USPTO volition no longer be updating the U.s. Class information on its database, and have given discover that the USPCS information should be considered a "static collection". Therefore, it would be best practice not to use US Class in USPTO searching any longer.  The EPO has also stopped the use of its own EPO classification arrangement in favor of CPC, and Espacenet no longer has a search field for the EPO Classification. The IPC remains equally an alphabetize term in both databases.

(58)Field of Search: These are the Us classes/subclasses or CPC classes/subclasses the Examiner searched when he examined this patent. If yous are doing a patent search and find a patent which seems similar to your idea, this can requite you a hint of other places you should be looking.

(56)References Cited: This is a list of the prior fine art that the Examiner found in his search, or which were listed by the patentee on an "Information Disclosure Statement" (IDS) filed with the application. Patents flagged with an asterisk are those that the Examiner felt were particularly relevant to the patentability of this patent. Both United states of america and foreign patents may exist listed, as well every bit not-patent literature the Examiner might feel was relevant.

Main Examiner, Assistant Examiner:These are the USPTO Examiners who did the exam of the application when it was filed in the USPTO.

(74)Attorney, Agent or Business firm:When the Outcome Fee is paid for the patent, 1 or more patent attorneys, patent agents or law firms may exist listed on the comprehend sail. In this instance, the firm who filed and prosecuted the application was Brownish & Michaels PC (surprised?) and Greg Dziegielewski was the Patent Counsel for the Assignee, BorgWarner Inc, at the fourth dimension the patent issued.

(57)Abstract:A brief summary of the invention, with the emphasis on "brief" (less than 150 words). Annotation that the abstract is normally a much broader description of the invention than the claims, which really define the limits of the patent's coverage.

Number of claims and drawing sheets:Just an enumeration of the number of claims and sheets of drawing in the patent, and then that you can determine if the copy you take is complete.

Representative drawing: The Examiner picks one of the drawing figures to put on folio 1 of the patent. Usually, this is figure i, simply if the Examiner feels another effigy shows the invention amend, he will pick that i.

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