About the WIPO Digital Access Service

The applicant requests the OFF that they wish a priority document to be registered with the DAS system. This notification can happen in different ways, depending on the procedures of the OFF. The applicant may submit the request when filing the original application, or they may file a separate request with the OFF. An OFF might not require a request from the applicant to register a priority document with the DAS system.

The OFF may check the applicant’s right to file abroad, and make other checks as necessary.

The OFF supplies the mandatory data elements in the registration request including IP type, priority office code, priority application number, priority application filing date and access code it is generated by the OFF. If the access code is to be generated by WIPO-DAS, the applicant’s email address must be provided as part of the registration metadata.

The OFF makes the document available to the DAS system in one of the following ways: 

• The OFF uploads a copy of the document to the DAS system or sends information to the DAS system about the availability of the document, using the PCT-EDI protocol and the “add-entry” transaction.
• The OFF sends information to the DAS system about the availability of the document using the TDA protocol and a new “dasRegister” transaction.
• The OFF uploads a copy of the document to the DAS system, using the Office portal.

The OFF or the DAS system notifies the applicant of a unique “access code” that will be needed by the OSF to retrieve the document: 

• if the OFF supports the functionality, the OFF generates the access code, sends it to the applicant, and notifies the DAS system of the access code as part of the registration metadata.
• for an OFF that is not equipped to generate access codes, the DAS system generates the code, stores it with the document, and notifies the applicant by email. In this case, the applicant’s email address must be provided as part of the registration metadata.

• In the case of trademark document, no access code is generated.
• The OFF may also decide that all applications of a certain type (e.g. all Trademark applications) are systematically made available to the DAS, whether or not this is requested by the applicant.
• Based on a bilateral agreement with the IB, the OFF may submit documents to the DAS system in paper format. In this case, the IB will take the role of the OFF in the basic flow above (register document, supply metadata, generate Access Code).
• Some Offices may have technical constraints in their IT system or cannot be uploaded using the Office portal which would not accept a large-sized document (e.g. 50 MB). In this context, an over-sized document will be sent the IB on CD/DVD.
• If the OFF makes a registration without indicating the priority application filing date, the system will reject the registration request. This is to enable the cross-check of the priority filing date by DAS at retrieval of the document.

OFF currently operating under Route A or C will continue to use the system in the same way, until their IT systems have been upgraded. The following transition assumptions will be made:

• Only patent documents may be uploaded by such offices, and the system will automatically set the type of IP right to “patent”.
• During the transitional period, the system continues to allow OFFs to make registrations without indicating the filing date (in which case, the filing date part of the check by DAS at OSF step needs to be bypassed).
• If the OFF does not generate the access code, it must supply the applicant’s email address so that the IB can generate the access code and send it to the applicant. 

• Documents for the following IP rights will be supported: Patents, Trademarks, Industrial Designs and Utility Models.
• When a document is uploaded or made available, the following metadata must be provided and stored in the system: office of first filing, application number and application filing date. Optionally, the applicant waiver date (e.g. form SB39 for the USPTO) may be provided and stored in the system.
• The system must support documents with colour and greyscale images in JPEG or TIFF format for Industrial Designs and for Trademarks.
• Initially, the TDA protocol will only be available for Patents. This means that documents for other types of IP right can only be uploaded into the system using the PCT-EDI protocol or the Office portal. The TDA protocol needs to be extended to support other IP rights in the future.
• If the applicant’s email address is not available, the OFF may provide the registered post mail address to the DAS system so that the access code would be sent to the applicant on paper.
• Access code may be generated by the OFF or by the IB. This is an option to be chosen by the OFF.  To reduce errors, a short, consistent format of code is required from all OFFs. The code generated should consist of exactly 4 alphanumeric characters, case insensitive.  However, although any alphanumeric characters are permitted in order to provide compatibility with codes already used by USPTO, it is strongly recommended that new implementations should use only upper-case hexadecimal characters (0 digits: 0 to 9) and only 6 upper-case letters A to F in order to avoid the risk of transcription errors as a result of characters of similar appearance. This is in compliance with ISO 7064.
• The Access Code will be generated only once per document. Once issued, it will not be changed in its lifetime; this would avoid introducing additional administrative procedures at the OFF and the OFF to deal with changes of access codes.
• If there is any change of the priority filing date, the depositing Office should send an overwriting update to DAS by new dasRegister operation of the TDA protocol or add-entry of the PCT-EDI protocol. Details of the new dasRegister operation are to be specified and added to the TDA protocol through a new change request. It is assumed that there will be only very rare cases for which the update of the priority date might occur after the document is already retrieved accessing Offices. Therefore notifying the Offices of the document replacement change may be handled case by case as part of the system operation monitoring and follow-up.
• The date of registration of the document in the new Route becomes the date of availability of the document, which is stated in the certificate of availability generated by DAS.
• Documents containing color image(s) can be registered in DAS, regardless of the type of IP applications.

For Offices which implement the access code generation, it is recommended to make the DAS registration before communicating the access code to the applicant. If these two operations are performed in the reverse order, there will be situation where some applicants may fail to associate the priority documents with their WIPO account because of the delay in communication of DAS registrations between the OFF and DAS.

As recommended by the DAS Working Group, the concept of priority document being made “ publicly available” via DAS is removed in respect of access permissions. At present, some Offices provide the application publication date to the DAS system as part of the registration metadata. In the future, if the publication date is provided by the OFF, it will be stored in the system but will not be used.

Some Offices maintain their own digital libraries of priority documents. But access to the relevant priority document is granted on the basis of a successful cross-check of the priority filing dates performed by DAS in addition to the verification of the access code. As the priority filing date is an important element used to authorize access to the documents and if correction of the priority filing date is made by the OFF after registration in DAS, there should be a provision for Offices to update the record held in DAS.

There will be cases for which access codes have been generated by the OFF as Route C Office but the applicant would use them to register the corresponding priority documents via the applicant portal after the Office has migrated to the new Route. In this context, DAS would consider these applications as unknown and display a warning message indicating the reason as follows: 

• The access code could be incorrect
• The application number could be incorrect
• The access code could be generated by the OFF under Route C and the applicant had not registered the application prior to the Office’s migration to the new Route on [MIGRATION DATE]. To this end, the system should record the migration date of each Route C Office, noting that these cases would not apply to Route A Offices. The warning message should advise the applicant to request the priority document to be registered with DAS again by the OFF

Note: no access code is generated for Trademark documents

The applicant requests the OSF that a priority document is retrieved via the DAS system. This request can happen in different ways, depending on the procedures of the office. The applicant supplies an access code with the request. An OFF might not require a request from the applicant to retrieve a priority document via DAS.

The OSF requests to retrieve a copy of the priority document via the DAS system. The OSF supplies the following data in the request: priority office code, IP type, priority application number, priority application filing date and access code: 

• If the OSF uses the TDA protocol, the request is sent using a “pdRequest” transaction.
• If the OSF uses the PCT-EDI protocol, the request is sent using a “get-document” transaction.
• If the OSF uses the Office portal, the request is submitted as a download operation.

The system checks the availability of the document and the validity of the access code. If the identifying data or the access code are not correct, the system returns an error message with the reason for the rejection of the request (e.g. “Application number and access code do not match”, etc)

The system retrieves the priority document: 

• If the OFF has registered the document using the TDA protocol, the system retrieves the document from the digital library of the OFF using a “pdRequest” transaction. It is the responsibility of the OFF to check the matching application filing date and to provide the appropriate response.
• If the OFF has uploaded the document using the PCT-EDI protocol or the Office portal, the system retrieves the document from its own digital library if the application filing date provided by the OSF matches the record in DAS. If the application filing date does not match the record in DAS, the system returns an error message with the reason for the rejection of the request (e.g. “ application number and filing date do not match”).
• If the OFF has registered the document with a link to the external document held at the OFF using the PCT-EDI protocol, the system retrieves the document from the digital library of the OFF using the “get-document” transaction. It is the responsibility of the OFF to check the matching application filing date and to provide the appropriate response.

The system delivers the document to the OSF in response to one of the above requesting transaction in step 2.

• In the case of trademark documents, there is no access code. Any OSF can access any trademark document that has been registered with the DAS system.
• For Patents, Industrial Designs and Utility Models priority documents, permission must be granted on the basis of the access code only, as described in the section relating to Security. There is a possibility that old access codes (a maximum of 10-digit alphanumeric characters) may be received from applicants by OSFs

An OSF that has not updated its systems may be obliged to accept a Utility Model or Industrial Design document as priority for a Patent application (other scenarios are also possible). In this case, the OSF may contact the IB and request a copy of the document or arrange a bilateral agreement with the IB so that Utility Model priority documents are sent on paper or DVD.

OSF currently operating under Route A or C will need to update their systems for retrieving documents with the DAS system in the following ways:

• Provide all identifying data when requesting the document. Required data will be: priority office code, IP type, priority application number, priority application filing date, access code.
• If the OSF has not updated its systems to provide the necessary data, only patent documents may be retrieved.

Some depositing Offices (e.g. the Japanese Patent Office) may offer the service to make available a foreign priority document held in a national application. It is necessary to register the national application number and country code that holds the priority document in addition to the priority office code, priority application number, priority filing date. This is useful if the actual Office of first filing is not a DAS participating Office. This arrangement implies that a single priority application could, in principle, be registered with DAS more than once. As such, multiple valid access codes would be issued and recorded sufficiently to determine the appropriate OFF. In the unlikely event of codes for the same application from different Offices matching, DAS should supply the document by preference directly from the actual OFF (if the code matches the OFF code) or alternatively from the Office which first registered the application with that code.

• Documents for the following IP rights will be supported: Patents, Trademarks, Industrial Designs and Utility Models.
• The system supports documents with colour and grayscale images in JPEG, TIFF or PDF format for Industrial Designs and for Trademarks.
• Documents are transmitted to the accessing Offices as received from the depositing Office. But some Offices in their capacity of OSF may have the technical constraint to accept the document in black and white Tiff format only. In this case, DAS will perform a color or grayscale to black and white conversion with possible loss of quality and it would be useful to provide a conversion indicator in the transmission protocol to notify the accessing Office of such cases.
• Initially, the TDA protocol will only be available for Patents. This means that documents for other types of IP right can only be requested from the system using the PCT-EDI protocol or the Office portal. The TDA protocol needs to be extended to support other IP rights in the future.
• Some Offices may have technical constraints in their IT system or the TDA implementation which would not accept a large-sized document (e.g. 50 MB). In this context, an over-sized document will be delivered to the requesting Office on CD/DVD as it works at present (including the DAS system itself).
• Distinct error messages make it easier for the Offices to respond to any error that may occur due to any mismatch combination of priority application number, access code and priority filing date.

Note: the access code is not required and not checked for Trademark documents.

The applicant enters the priority office, IP type, priority application number, priority application filing date, and DAS access code. All fields are mandatory.

The system validates the information given and checks to see whether a priority document with the corresponding data is available. 

If there are any errors, the system gives the applicant the opportunity to correct the data.

If the data correctly matches a registered priority document, the system associates that document with the WIPO account. A document can be associated with multiple WIPO accounts to manage situations where there are multiple applicants for one application.

• In principle, any users of the Applicant Portal can associate the priority document with his account as long as he gives the correct access code. The DAS 2.0 Applicant Portal does not provide access to confidential document content or data. In this context, the new access code is considered as a kind of check digit rather than a password control code used to manage access authorizations to priority documents as it is in DAS 1.0. Support will be provided by the IB to deal with conflict resolutions and identify abusive use of the Access Code by an unauthorized person.
• The provisioning and management of WIPO account is served by another WIPO online service which is not part of DAS and is available at the URL https://www3.wipo.int/wipoaccounts/generic/public/register.xhtml. The password used for each WIPO account is to be defined by the applicant and it is different from the access code, including its formats. Details of the WIPO account are visible after login. In particular, it includes a public customer ID which uniquely identifies the account and which can be shared with other business partners by the account holder. How the account holders notify each other of their ID is to be communicated outside DAS (e.g. through email).

This function is required to deal with assignment of rights so that the account holder would be able to remove the priority document from his account.

The Applicant selects a priority document and the option to de-associate the document.

The system prompts for his confirmation.

The applicant confirms the de-association and document is removed from his account.

In case of assignment of rights, the access code may be communicated by the current applicant to the new applicant, who can in turn associate the document with his own account.

The Applicant selects a priority document and selects the option to view the document access history and availability status.

The system displays the document data (application number, date, etc), the date of availability when the document was made available via TDA or if the document was uploaded via PCT-EDI or the Office portal, the access history including the Offices which have accessed the document and the dates of access or the Offices which have attempted to access the document and the reason of failure (e.g. application number and filing date mismatch). It is important that the document content is not visible.

The Applicant selects a priority document and selects the option to edit the access control list.

The system displays the access control list and allows the Applicant to add or remove Offices (OSF) from the list. Only participating offices are shown but changes are disabled for Offices which have already migrated to the new Route (e.g. checkboxes being grayed out).

The applicant may also delete the access control list from a document.