Coverage of PCT (World) Patent Applications
Starting January 1, 1996, the Japan Patent Office started
publishing unexamined PCT (World) patent applications in
CDROM form. ISTA has received all of these documents for
its archive.
The publication dates for the documents in this archive
are the _Japanese publication dates_, not the international
publication dates. Because of this, ISTA must search each
WO publication number (that you might obtain from an online
search of Derwent's World Patent Index) to determine whether
or not it is in ISTA's archive.
The publication dates of these documents in Japan lags the
international (world) publication dates by several months
(6-12 months). The Japan Patent Office also handles PCT
patent applications with Japanese priorities separately