---
id: "ep_publication_number"
kind: "datatype"
status: "draft"
is_pii: false
categories: ["legal"]
langs: ["common"]
quality: 75
url: "https://registry.apicrafter.io/datatype/ep_publication_number"
---

# European patent publication number (`ep_publication_number`)

> **Draft.** Draft records have not been reviewed yet and may be incomplete or wrong; do not treat them as authoritative for legal or compliance decisions.

Number under which the European Patent Office publishes documents from one European patent application: EP, a seven-digit serial number shared by all publications of the application, and an optional kind code. A1 to A4 mark application publications and search reports, B1 and B2 patent specifications; 8 and 9 in place of the digit mark corrections and corrected reprints. Databases that drop the leading zeros of the serial number are not covered.

- Personal data (PII): no
- Categories: Legal and compliance (legal)
- Countries: global
- Languages: Common to most languages (common)
- Classification: identifier

## Detection

Regular expression (Python `re`):

```
^EP ?\d{7}(?: ?(?:A[1-489]|B[1-389]))?$
```

## Examples

- `EP1000000A1` — Application publication of European patent application 1000000
- `EP1000000B1` — Patent specification of the same application
- `EP 1000000` — Publication number written without a kind code
- `EP12345678A1` (invalid example) — Eight digits instead of seven

## Sources

- doc: <https://www.wipo.int/documents/d/standards/docs-en-07-02-02.pdf>
- doc: <https://www.wipo.int/documents/d/standards/docs-en-07-03-02.pdf>
- doc: <https://www.wipo.int/documents/d/standards/docs-en-03-16-01.pdf>

## Quality

Score 75/100. Missing: mapping (Wikidata, Schema.org, ...), translation, detector coverage.

JSON: <https://registry.apicrafter.io/api/v1/datatypes/ep_publication_number.json> · Edit: <https://github.com/apicrafter/metacrafter-registry/edit/main/data/datatypes/any/legal/ep_publication_number.yaml>