DOCUMENTATION FOR THE FPRIOR_15.TXT PATENT BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA EXTRACT FILE -------------------------------------------------------------------------- FPRIOR_DOC_15.TXT 6/30/2016 7:08PM Questions about the custom patent data extract files should be directed to: US Patent and Trademark Office Electronic Information Products Division Patent Technology Monitoring Team P.O. Box 1450 Alexandria, VA 22313-1450 tel : (571) 272-5600 e-mail : oeip@uspto.gov Patent Bibliographic Information- FOREIGN PRIORITY Data ------------------------------------------------------- Notes ----- *** PLEASE NOTE THAT DATE FIELDS ARE IN "YYYY-MM-DD" FORMAT *** This custom extract data file includes claimed Foreign Priority information displayed on the front page of issuing U.S. patents. Foreign Priority information is included for utility patents (i.e., "patents for inventions") issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) from 1/1/1975 to 12/31/2015. Foreign priority information is included for design, plant, and reissue patents, defensive publications, and statutory invention registrations issued by the USPTO from 1/1/1977 to 12/31/2015. The foreign priority information contained in this custom data extract is limited to the data included in the foreign priority specific bibliographic section of issued USPTO documents and does not include foreign priority information that may appear in other bibliographic or non-bibliographic sections of the patent documents. Please note that a data record for an issuing patent will appear in this data file only if the patent has at least one foreign priority document associated with it in its foreign priority specific bibliographic section. See the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Manual of Patent Examining Procedure for further information relating to patents and claimed foreign priority. File name: FPRIOR_15.TXT 2,747,517 records, CY 2015 File size: 108,779,466 bytes (about 109 MB) - The Foreign Priority custom data extract file format is as follows: - Columns 1-7 : Issued patent number that contains the foreign priority information (character field) - Column 8 : Unused - Columns 9-12 : Foreign priority document sequence number; this identifies the order in which the foreign priority document information is presented on the issued patent (integer field) - Column 13 : Unused - Columns 14-16: State-country code of the foreign priority document; this identifies the country associated with the priority document (character field) - Column 17 : Unused - Columns 18-27: Foreign priority date; this identifies the priority date associated with the foreign priority document; the date format is "YYYY-MM-DD" where YYYY is the four digit year, MM is the two digit month, and DD is the two digit day (character/date field) - Column 28 : Unused - Columns 29-53: Foreign priority document number; this identifies the document number associated with the foreign priority document (character field) The FOREIGN PRIORITY file is sorted by ascending patent number (primary) and foreign priority document sequence number (secondary) Each line is terminated with a carriage return and a line feed character (0D 0A in hexadecimal) after the last populated data field. Trailing blank spaces in each record may be removed to reduce the size of the file. - A list of the patent numbers that do not correspond to actual patents is supplied in the file, "WITHDRAWN_75_15_PN.TXT". Since these "withdrawn" patent numbers do not correspond to valid documents, they are excluded from the patent bibliographic data extract file. - A file "LASTPN_15.TXT" has been provided that displays the last patent number by year of patent grant and by patent document type. - Issued U.S. patents that are missing from the data file are listed in a separate file, "MISSING_15.TXT." In general, patent documents are missing from this data file because the corresponding data were omitted from the original electronic text files produced for the patents issued each week. Most of the issued U.S. patents missing from the custom extract data file were utility patents granted in 1975. - A file, "ST_CNTRY_15.TXT" contains state and country codes and corresponding U.S. state and country names for geographic data fields appearing in this data extract. THE USER SHOULD NOTE THAT SOME STATE-COUNTRY CODES IN THE CUSTOM DATA EXTRACT MAY NOT HAVE CORRESPONDING ENTRIES IN THE "ST_CNTRY_15.TXT" FILE. - Generally, the format of the foreign priority document numbers has not been standardized. As a result, the format of the identified foreign priority document numbers may vary from record to record. - ** NOTE ** Although efforts have been made to remove duplicate foreign priority document entries, some duplicate entries may remain. - A small sample of the data contained on this custom extract data file is included in a separate file, "SAMPLE_FPRIOR_15.TXT".