Patent Number Search Format

SureChEMBL identifies all patents using a unique identifier called a SureChEMBL Patent Number (SCPN). This is a unique document identifier used by SureChEMBL where hyphens are inserted after the country code and before the kind code i.e. CC-n-KK where CC is the 2-digit country code, n is the patent number and KK is the 1- or 2-digit kind code. An SCPN always includes a kind code and looks like this: WO-2012088469-A1.

To mitigate the need to manually convert input patent numbers into the correct SCPN format, SureChEMBL has implemented some level of patent number normalisation to handle a variety of different patent number search formats from issuing patent authorities and vendors. 

You may enter a patent number with or without a kind code, with or without hyphens. If you enter a patent number without using a kind code, the system will retrieve all matching SCPNs for the input patent number (i.e. it will retrieve EP-0555555-A2, EP-0555555-A3 and EP-0555555-B1 for the input EP555555).

Table 1 below details SureChEMBL Patent Number search formats for US, EP, WO and JP publication numbers. 

Table 2 details examples of additional search formats SureChEMBL can handle.

Note: Patent numbers containing “,” (comma) cannot be resolved and it is suggested to remove the “,”.

Key

Y = Western Year
E = Emperor Year
n = Number
K = Kind Code