WIPO Handbook on Industrial Property Information and Documentation

This online Handbook on Industrial Property Information and Documentation is the authoritative source of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Standards, Recommendations and Guidelines in the field of industrial property information and documentation. It also provides information on various matters concerning patent, trademark and industrial design documentation. The Handbook is a valuable aid to industrial property offices in establishing or modernizing their information and publication systems. It helps industrial property offices and other users to keep pace with, and put into implementation, developments in information technologies that apply to the exchange, dissemination and sharing of industrial property information, as well as for the retrieval of the technological information contained in patent documents and, to a certain extent, the legal information contained in industrial property documents in general. The Handbook is an important tool for both the novice and the more experienced industrial property information user.

The various Standards, Recommendations and Guidelines reproduced in this Handbook have been drafted with the help of groups of experts from many countries in meetings organized by WIPO and are the result of international cooperation in the field of industrial property. The contribution of these experts to the development of industrial property information is gratefully acknowledged.