For PIUGers who do not know Gerry Gooding, let me first
point out that Gerry is one of the best patent translators
in the business with particular strengths in electronics
and semiconductors.
There are several sources of confusion in the
numbering of Japanese patent documents. In this
case, there was a change in Japanese patent practice
in 1996 from a post-opposition granting practice to a
pre-opposition granting practice. Prior to April 1996,
the 'B' documents were patent applications that had
been examined and passed by the examiners, and were
then published for opposition. If they passed the
opposition period, they would be granted. These
older documents were the "Kokoku" and are numbered
serially starting from zero each January.
After April 1996, these applications were granted
patent rights after examination and thus have
registration, i.e., patent numbers. These numbers
started from 2,500,000 and are assigned sequentially.
Unfortunately, both are "B" (more precisely, "B2")
documents. I suppose that adding the superfluous
year before the patent number, e.g., 8-256987 B,
allows these numbers to be entered into an existing
database that also contains the older numbering
system. However, I don't think that it is good
information practice from a user's viewpoint.
Gerry Gooding wrote:
> As Alan says, Japanese patents are numbered serially. They do not start anew
> each year. Japanese Patents are B documents, but not all B documents are
> patents. This has caused confusion for some folks who do not read Japanese.
>
> Gerry Gooding
> Huntington Beach, CA
>
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