Korea's Patent Numbering System becomes the global standard

South Korea's patent numbering system has been reportedly adopted as the global standard. KIPO (the Korean Intellectual Property Office) said the Standing Committee on Information Technology (SCIT) of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has adopted the country's patent numbering system as its standard at a recent Standards and Documentation Working Group meeting held in Geneva, Switzerland. KIPO's standard has a maximum number of 13 digits of the international patent numbering system against the current 10.

KIPO's patent numbering system consists of a two-digit patent-type identifier, a four-digit year for the patent application number and a seven-digit serial number, for example 10/2003/1224567. It will be used to identify applications, published documents and registered rights by industrial property offices round the globe. The first two digits classify whether the application is for an invention, a utility model, an industrial design, a topography of an integrated circuit or a trademark. The global standard was previously a 10-digit number consisting of a four-digit year code and a six-digit serial number, for example 2002-123456. With the adoption of the KIPO proposal to revise the WIPO standard regarding international commercial brand numbering system for documentation, South Korea has been designated as the task leader to revise the international standard. KIPO, together with WIPO working group member countries, will survey commercial brand numbering systems of all member countries by the end of September, 2003 and draw up a standard revision draft for uniform numbering of all international brands to be used for electronic document processing. The draft plan will be tendered to the Standards and Documentation Working Group meeting in December 2003.