Patent Resources -- The List of IP Acronyms

Acronyms -- The alphabet soup of intellectual property — acronyms, abbreviations, and more. Words formed from the initial letters of other words — like FRAND - Fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory - how royalties are determined for standard essential patents.

Way Better Patents maintains a list of the meanings of the acronyms as they relate to intellectual property.  Here PCT means Patent Cooperation Treaty, not to be confused with percentage; Primary Care Trust (the UK National Health Service) or porphyria cutanea tarda, a form of photosensitive skin disease.  AU means Art Unit in patent speak though depending on the patent domain it can also be a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal and the atomic number 79 - GOLD.

Use the list to throw around the acronyms like the rest of the patent cognoscenti or to figure out what they are taking about.

Way Better Patents has a variety of patent information tools designed to make information about patents more accessible and easier to understand.   From time to time we post updates on these tools here.

Patent Resources - The Numbers

Patents have lots of numbers.  These resources will help you figure out what all these numbers mean.  The numbers can also help you figure out the "vintage" of a patent.

Patent Numbers By Year - A table that shows the starting patent number for each year.  This will help you get a rough idea of when a patent is granted.

Application Series Numbers - The series number is the first two digits of a patent application number.  Until recently the series numbers were the same for a long period of time.  As the number of patent applications accelerates, the series numbers are changing more quickly.  Application series numbers also help you know the type of patent application.  Applications that start with 60, 61, and 62 are provisional applications.  Applications starting with 29 are design patent applications.

There is also a link to a list of patent application numbers by year.  It is also helpful for figuring out the vintage of a patent and broad estimate of the filing timeframe when you don't have access to the patent documents themselves.

Check out our Words, Numbers, and Resources links to help you find information that make patents easier to understand.

Patent Resources -- Kind Codes

Kind Codes

Kind Codes are used to identify the type of patent publication - the kind of document. Kind Codes appear on the printed document or on the PDF to the right of the patent number. Understanding the Kind Code can help you understand the history of the patent. For example, a patent with a B1 Kind Code was not published when it was a patent application. A patent with Kind Code of B2 was published as an application.  The Kind Code B1 in the example below indicates a patent where the application wasn't published after 18 months after the Pre-Grant Publication process as USPTO - Patent:  Not Previously Published.

The list is supposed to be a standardized list adopted by most of the globe's patent offices but like most things in the patentsphere there are many variations.  We have gathered the most current list of US Kind Codes used by the USPTO along with links to the two different lists that they publish that contain the data.

Just to give you a feel for the art and science of the Kind Code, here's link to one provided by the American Chemical Society:
http://www.cas.org/content/references/patkind

Here's another from the European Patent Office:
https://register.epo.org/espacenet/help?topic=kindcodes

And if you are really ambitious and want to explore all the global schemes and how they have changed over time, here is a link to the 101 page version from the Handbook on Industrial Property Information and Documentation from the World Intellectual Patent Organization (WIPO - pronounced Why-Poe if you want to sound like a patent cognoscenti.)

http://www.wipo.int/standards/en/pdf/07-03-02.pdf

As you can see from the list, Kind Codes are fluid just like everything else in the patentsphere.

Way Better Patents has a variety of patent information tools designed to make information about patents more accessible and easier to understand.   From time to time we post updates on these tools here.

Patent Resources -- US Patent Classification Glossary

US Patent Classification Glossary -- An alphabetical list of the definitions of terms of art that appear within the body of the US Patent Classification system class definitions.

The US Patent Classification (USPC) system includes definitions of key terms relevant to the definition of the types of inventions included in the classification.

USPTO uses these words to define what the specific term means in the context of the classifications. These are terms of art — a term that has a specialized meaning in a particular chemical, electrical, or mechanical scientific or engineering domain. Within the current US Patent Classification system a word can have a different meaning depending on the area of invention that it resides in. There are three different definitions for the word "Active" — one that pertains to pharmacology and biology; one that relates to plant growth; and a third that deals with an "active database." There are five definitions of "Acylic", three for "Address Data"; five for "Alkali Metals."

Way Better Patents' data wizards pulled all of the definitions from all of the classes that had definitions and assembled them into one alphabetical collection.  You can click the link and find the definition as it appears in the Class description.

The advantage of this presentation is that you can see what all three instances of the term "Address Data" mean and then click the link to the actual class definition of the one you think is most important to you and explore what it means.  It also helps people new to researching patents understand the impact of how different terms are used within different domains.  This becomes important when you are researching inventions where technology is converging - a medical device with a software component, or a smoke detecting cell phone for example.

The legend below will help you to navigate to the alphabetical list of terms.

| A | B | C-CL | CM-CZ | D-DIM | DIM-DZ | E | F | G | H | I | J-K | L | M-MET | MET-MZ | N | O | P-PHA | PHE-PON | POR-PZ | Q | R | S-SEPA | SEPO-SMT | SN-STEM | STEP-SZ | T-TOG | TON-TZ | U | V | W | X-Z |

Way Better Patents has a variety of patent information tools designed to make information about patents more accessible and easier to understand.   From time to time we post updates on these tools here.

(So far we haven't heard anything about how these in situ  (a patentesque word meaning in place) will be reflected in the nascent Cooperative Patent Classification system (CPC) but it's still good to understand the different meaning of different words when they are used within the definition of particular classes of art (groups of inventions) at USPTO.)