NOTE: Since this article was published the ISO specification for PDF/A has added new “parts”. Visit the PDF/A resource page for current information on published versions of PDF/A. Executive Summary PDF/A-1a is the higher of the two conformance levels for PDF/A. This article explains that the “a” stands for “accessible”, and provides an overview … Read more
The European Patent Convention says up to 4,000 new patent applications and specifications are published every week. Since its foundation in 1978, the European Patent Office has published around 3.3 million patent documents. The global intellectual property database espacenet storing all electronically available patent documents worldwide contains currently around 80 million patent documents and is growing yearly by more than 2 million documents. Could PDF/A be a solution for them?
