The Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office (Cipro) last week launched the online South African Electronic Patent Database, providing access to all the full original documents of granted patents in South Africa between 1984 and 2005.

This forms part of the first phase of the database project, which aims to digitalise all 
granted patents in force from 1988 to 2008.

There are options to 
peruse the abstract, the description, claims or drawings of the patents they are searching for, while all the bibliographical data of all patent applications on Cipro’s system are also available.

“Cipro is convinced that any-
body who logs onto the Cipro 
database will be impressed by the creative and viable patents that have been registered with [us] over the years,” Cipro CEO Keith Sendwe said.

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