An Authority File provides a definitive list of all patent documents issued by a patent office.
The primary purpose of authority files is to enable patent offices and third party patent information providers to assess the completeness of their collections of publications of other patent offices.
In order to allow consistency checks an authority file provides all publication numbers for patent documents of which the numbers were published at least once. This therefore also includes numbers for which no published document is available (e.g. as is the case for USPTO applications withdrawn late, for destroyed documents) or for which the publication concerned only the publication of bibliographic data.
Authority File specification (PDF, 45 KB)
Authority Files for:
- European Patent Office
- Japan Patent Office
- Korean Intellectual Property Office
- National Intellectual Property Administration of the People's Republic of China
- United States Patent and Trademark Office