Your patent number (also referred to as "application number", "patent application number" or "official application number") is a unique number assigned to each application received by the South African patent office.
In South Africa, this application number becomes the patent number once the patent is granted and no separate publication number is issued when the patent is published. The South African patent office requires this number to be displayed on all documentation submitted to the office in relation to the patent (including renewal application forms).
In order for us to administer a renewal application on your behalf, you need to input the patent number in the Quick Quote tool.
Your South African patent number should be in the format "yyyy/sssss" where "yyyy" is the year of the application and "sssss" is a 5-digit serial number. The year and serial number should be separated by a forward slash "/" and should not include any spaces or characters which are not numbers.
The easiest way to find your patent number is to look at any of the official documentation received from the patent office or from your patent attorney. This can be a filing receipt, application form, or even a renewal certificate. The number usually appears in the upper left hand of the form as can be seen from the extracts below. You can also peruse the correspondence from your patent attorney which would usually include this number in the title of the correspondence.
A few examples of how patent numbers appear in official forms are shown in the images below. The images are extracts of official documents which will give you an indication of what to look for.
The first example is a copy of the main application form which has been stamped with the number by the patent office. This is also referred to as a filing receipt.
The second example is a copy of a renewal certificate which has the number added to it.
Due to file names limiting special characters or some search websites not allowing special characters, such as the forward slash "/", in their search terms, South African patents are often written in different formats. It is also not uncommon to add a country prefix (ZA for South Africa) to the beginning of the number. By modifying these numbers to conform to the format required by the Quick Quote tool, you should be able to locate the patent in question. A few examples of such variations are shown below.
ZA2015/00976
ZA 2015/00976
ZA201500976
ZA 201500976
201500976
15/00976
2015/976
15/976
If you have any trouble locating your patent number, please send us an email at info@renext-ip.com with the information you have available, and we will gladly assist you to find your number.