Patent Numbers

This page summarises the formats of patent numbers as commonly found and used by PatentMatic.

European patents

These have 7 digits (e.g. 1234567).

US patents

Granted patents have 1 to 7 digits (e.g. 4519 or 6523456). Design patents have 1 to 6 digits which should be preceded with a 'D' (e.g. D1 or D321321). Commas are optional (e.g. D323,406 or 5,231,340). Applications have 11 numbers - a 4 digit year then 7 futher digits (e.g. 20010000044).

World (PCT) patents

These can have 7, 8 or 10 digits. Early patents have a 2 digit year then 5 further digits (e.g. 0251230). Later patents have a 2 digit year then 6 further digits (e.g. 02051231). Finally, from 2004, patents have a 4 digit year then a further 6 digits (e.g. 2004058250).

Japanese (JP) patents

These can have 7, 8, 10 or 11 digits. Applications have a 4 digit year then 7 further digits. Publications are more complicated. From 2000 they have a 4 digit year then 6 further digits (e.g. 2004000123). Prior to this they had a 1-2 digit 'emperor' year followed by a further 6 digits (e.g. 1123456 and 10123456). [Applications may also be found with emperor years - if so the should be converted and entered as western years.] Japanese to Western year conversion table.

Notes

Patent references may be obtained in slightly different formats depending on the source - if so try adding or removing a zero, changing the year representation etc.. On the documents themselves they are usually written as shown here: -

• EP 1 340 749 A1
• US 6,523,456 B1
• US 2001/0000044 A1
• WO03/107732 A1
• 2004-1101 (JP2004001101)
• etc.