Re: Question regarding Chinese and Taiwanese patents

Dear Jackie
Your Chinese number format, whilst being a ZL, is not a patent. The
Chinese string "Zhuan Li" does imply grant, but the clue is in the
number format. Cases starting with a publication number CN 2####### are
utility models. As such, you are unlikely to find any record of this
case in most commercial databases, apart from possibly PlusPat/FamPat on
Questel, based on EPODOC which does carry them, and also in esp_at_cenet.
As regards converting to the correct format, you can ignore the prefix
"ZL 2003" and replace it with the normal CN prefix. Then the number
itself appears too long. I suspect that the terminal 9 is in fact a
check digit which sometimes get carried over into publication numbers.
Try CN 2012674 with KD type U or Y

You also asked about


Also, has anyone come across a Taiwan patent in the following format:
M251582.

You're the second person in recent weeks to ask about unusual prefixes
on Taiwan cases. The number itself is in the right range for published
TW cases, and TW251582 is a valid number. The Taiwanese are rather
unusual in that they use the same set of numbers in contiguous blocks
for their patents and their utility models, so for example one week may
publish TW250000 to TW250100-A as patents and TW250101-Y to TW250200-Y
as utility models, then the next week starts as TW250201-A upwards as
patents and so on. It is possible that the M prefix is also a Chinese
language indicator for utility model type - in which case they are
supposed to be in DocDB (and hence esp_at_cenet/PlusPat) but not covered in
WPI.

I suggest that you go back to your requestor and find out whether the
subject matter of these two cases is typical of a utility model (e.g.
mechanical or electro-mechanical, unlikely to be chemical). If so, it
will give you something to work on when experimenting with number
formats. I have seen more detailed publications concerning
transformation of number formats (the Chinese have used at least 3 since
1985) but cannot lay hands on them straight away. I hope this gives you
something to experiment with.

Stephen Adams


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Stephen Adams

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Received on Tue Mar 15 2005 - 20:10:23