Dear D Harris,

Thank you for your information request dated 22 December 2022, in which you asked for information about patent applications that have been filed in the Welsh language.

It will be dealt with under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act and we will reply as soon as possible within twenty working days.

Many thanks/ Diolch
FOI Team

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Dear Mr Harris,

I am replying to your information request of 22 December 2022.

We have searched our data of electronically-filed patent applications, as well as patent applications originally filed on paper. Whilst our patent systems predate the Welsh Language Act and do not therefore have the provision for accurately counting applications filed in Welsh, we've run a check for Welsh language ('cy') titles/abstracts, and checked for any use of the phrases 'Disgrifiad' or 'Hawliad'+ (Welsh for ‘Description’ and ‘Claim(s)’) in our PDAX full text database, which has resulted in zero hits.

Though we don't have any completely watertight method of assessing whether we've ever had any Welsh language patent applications, our best answer is none at all to date.

It should be noted however that for paper-filed applications, our full text database may not be complete; and for those paper-filed applications that do exist in our database, the text will have been obtained via OCR (Optical Character Recognition).

Please let me know if your require any further information or explanation.

Regards,

Alison Smith | Information Rights Manager
Intellectual Property Office | Concept House | Cardiff Road | Newport | South Wales | NP10 8QQ
Tel: +44 (0)1633 814587 | Email: [Intellectual Property Office request email]

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