Full-text search available in Chinese and English for international applications filed in XML format

July 19, 2010

As from 15 July 2010, PATENTSCOPE® search service will support keyword searches in Chinese and English where international applications are filed electronically in XML format on or after 1 January 2010 with the State Intellectual Property Office of the People’s Republic of China as receiving Office in Chinese or English.

The searchable text data will include the descriptions and claims of international applications fulfilling the above-mentioned conditions which are published on or after 15 July 2010. Note that if an international application is the subject of an amendment to the claims under PCT Article 19, of modifications under PCT Rules 26, 37.2 and 91, or of incorporation by reference under PCT Rule 20.6, the XML data of the international application will be updated.

It is recalled that full-text data search is already possible in the following languages: English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Spanish, however in the case of those languages which use Latin characters (English, French, German and Spanish), where the original text is not in XML format, the searchable text format is obtained by applying Optical Character Recognition (OCR) procedures to the scanned images of the document. They therefore contain discrepancies with the originals and do not have any legal value. (the top of the document will specify that the text has been obtained by OCR if this is the case). As a consequence, only the PDF version of the PCT applications documents that contain the error-free scanned images should be considered as an electronic copy of the original document.