Minimum Requirements & Structure (Front Page

WIPO has published Standard ST.1 entitled "Recommendations Concerning the Minimum Data Elements Required to Uniquely Identify a Patent Document" in which the minimum elements include (see Paragraph 5 of the standard}[http://www.wipo.int/scit/en/standards/]:

The WIPO Standard ST.3 code of the industrial property office or organization publishing the document, e.g., "US" for a US patent document;
The publication number according to WIPO Standard ST.6, e.g., "7,000,000";
The kind-of-document code according to WIPO Standard ST.16, e.g., "B1"; and,
The date of publication of the document as provided by WIPO Standard ST.9 INID codes (40)-(48), as appropriate, using the calendar format recommended in WIPO Standard ST.2.

It is clear from the above standard, that any country or state or other patent-issuing authority (e.g., European Union) that is a party to WIPO (and, by extension, WTO) should adhere to the standard recommended by WIPO. This means that the combination of a two-letter country or patent-issuing entity code along with a unique document number and kind code, MUST be combined with an appropriate date in order to uniquely identify the patent document. Thus, in the US, where a certificate of correction might be issued after the patent has been issued, or issue a Reexamined Patent, the document must include these data, particularly including the new publication/issue date on the document. In some countries or patent-issuing bodies, several versions of the same patent document may be issued, e.g., with or without a search report attached, or with or without the results of an opposition, and, if they all share the same entity code, document number and kind code, can be distinguished by the publication date alone.

The unique identification of a document is important to ensure that the found-document citations in a search report are unambiguous. The recipient of the report should be advised whether all related published documents are being cited in the report or whether the recipient must check the cited documents themselves to ensure that the most recent document has been cited. For example, if a published patent application has been cited, it should be clear from the report contents whether the corresponding patent has been issued or not, or whether corrections have been published.