An Authority File provides a list of all patent document publication numbers issued by a patent office or a regional organisation.
The primary purpose is to allow other patent offices and other users to assess the completeness of the available patent documentation.
In order to allow consistency checks the list provides all publication numbers for patent documents of which the numbers were published at least once. Therefore this also includes numbers for which no published document is available (e.g. late withdrawn documents or destroyed documents) or for which the publication concerned only the publication of bibliographic data.
- Authority File specification
- Authority Files for:
- European Patent Office
- Japan Patent Office
- Korean Intelectual Property Office
- State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China
- United States Patent and Trademark Office