Serial number
Many countries recorded patent applications with a sequential serial number, and would use that for a while to describe the application. Much later when the patent was granted it would get the a permanent, different number. These serial numbers were sometimes drawn from printed numbered lists where a clerk would fill in the newest patent application.
Countries differed in their numbers and procedures somewhat:
U.S.
US patent specifications display serial numbers, apparently assigned by the USPO around the time of filing. We have not seen documentation about these, and we do not see their full meaning or the range of values. It appears that serial numbers cycle and are reused on later patent applications.
Cases possibly predating the consistent use of this protocol
General cases
We see illustrative uses. Patent US-1902-745953 refers to earlier US patents by serial number, and incidentally makes no use of the word "renewed" or the word "divided". This all seems to be a US-specific technique to refer to patent applications, even those which have been granted and have a public final number. Let's see if that's common. This process may not seem super-common, in comparison to the addition processes employed within other national systems, but it seems to be the dominant, possibly the exclusive, American method of making reference between patents, when the patents involved are all American.
Patent US-1914-1360694, of Elmer Ambrose Sperry and the Sperry Gyroscope Company, is a case in which one patent refers deep within its text, at two different points, to two other American patents, exclusively by way of filing date and serial number. In this case, the patent doing the referring gets into vastly different territory, but makes these references at these specific points, possibly to the work of an otherwise unrelated inventor.
Cases of renewal
These likely do not reflect changes in the substantive content of the patent(s) in question.
- Patent US-1912-1081794, 799816, 7 November 1913, refers to 674009 and filing date 1912-01-29, which application has been "renewed". One question is, has Patent US-1912-1081794 in effect "taken" the number 674009, and the early filing date, including the titular year, and is it therefore also the document, and is it therefore the document to which any other 674009 and filing date 1912-01-29 references apply? Patent US-1912-1081792, 684824, 1912-03-19, without any use of "renewed" or "divided", but within its text, refers to Serial Number 674009, filed 29 January 1912, and it also refers up-number to 694825, filed 1912-03-19.
- Patent US-1912-1153612, 1915-02-23 serial number 10119, refers to 1912-06-16 serial number 704114. So again, do these documents, in the case of renewals only(?), or also in cases of divisions, is there no other existing, or viable, document?
- Patent US-1915-1394816 is an example of a patent using one serial number in association with the patent's application date, and another in association with its date of renewal. Patent US-1917-1250262 is another example, with little or no sign that change has been made to the substantial content of the invention, and this is documented via reference to an earlier filing date and a serial number based in the processes of the year in which the earlier filing was done, which in this case is a different year. Indeed, this patent could hypothetically be re-designated as Patent US-1909-1250262.
- Patent US-1917-1300746
- Patent US-1918-1371815
Cases of a patent's being "divided"
These reflect a spitting of the substantive emphases of the earlier patent(s) to which reference is made. The resulting fractions of emphasis may or may not be built upon.
- Patent US-1915-1223017 and Patent US-1916-1326010, of inventor Albert Francis Zahm, have distinct filing dates, each associated with its own serial number, all as documented on the original patent documents. They both make identical reference to the same "application filed March 26, 1914, Serial No. 827,485", which we do not have on hand. In each case, in both cases, the patent to which the reference is made, has been "divided", this process resulting in the documentation of the patent making the reference. We have this usage of "divided" elsewhere. This is a handy case in which that word choice has the natural significance inherent to the meaning of the word, and with our having the results on hand. That is, the documentation, and possibly the technical import of the innovation itself, has been divided into parts.
- Patent US-1916-1459411 results from Patent US-1909-1485349 having been "divided". We may find one or more other patent(s) resulting from said division.
- Patent US-1918-1355624
A case of possibly mixed usage of "renewed" and "divided"
- Patent US-1918-1371204 refers to 23 Aug 1918, using serial number 251184, and results from the initial patent having been "divided", whereas Patent US-1921-1370445 likewise refers to the same 23 Aug 1918 filing date and serial number 251184 while purporting to results from its being merely "renewed".
Obscure and rare and tentative pertinence to Great Britain and France
- There are cases in which British patents have what may be a serial number, an example being Patent GB-1916-108259, though these being displayed is not a consistent matter and is not to be confused with the British phenomena of the Provisional Specification and the Complete Specification.
- Patent GB-1917-112688 is another example, with some fleshing out of these phenomena on the patent page itself.
- The additions to Patent FR-1916-493411 make reference to that brevet's filing date, also associating that date with an application filed under the No.84082. The parent-addition relations are all spelled out, and all relative to the "brevet principal", with the parent number, in that case 493411, being prominently displayed, all as is usual in the protocols of French certificates of addition. The odd reference to the otherwise inexplicable No.84082 could indeed reflect some underlying serial process. From the operational point of view, it doesn't have the outright and pointedly nominal significance, or the unavoidable utility, of our engagement with the American phenomena as articulated above. The French do not label it as "serial", though of course it may be.AvionHerbert (talk) 07:16, 26 November 2024 (PST)
Sweden
In Sweden, patent filings were recorded on numbered lines in handwritten registers and therefore there was an automatic number associated with each filing, and this might be tracked later. The later patent number would be consecutive with other patents granted at that time. Frederick Tell and Matti La Mela and their colleagues are familiar with the Scandinavian register numbers. It may be that this approach was similar in many countries at that time -- that the serial or register number is from a simple practical document with a written list, and it sticks with the application until it is clear that it will be granted and only then it gets a real patent number.
Italy
This may also be the meaning of the Italian register numbers: Registro attestati
Russia
- For more information see Russian patent office.
Russian patent applications appear to have been issued serial numbers beginning in 1896, the date of a major patent office modernization and also the initiation of a new series of patent numbers. Following the 1906 Russian industrial law applications were also given "protection certificates" identified by the applications' serial number. These numbers only appear on (facsimiles of) the published patents in Svod Privilegii for patents granted in 1906–7 or later, raising the question of whether these numbers were assigned retroactively or simply unused in publications until the protection law gave them new importance.
Germany
Upon filing the German patent office assigned a code to each application using a letter and a number. (The letter seems to be the initial of the inventor's family name or the first letter in a company name.) These codes were then used to refer to the application in publications tracking different stages of the application process. We don't yet know exactly how the numbers work (they seem to roughly to increase within each letter but not necessarily sequentially)nor what the office called these codes.