Patentee Name Harmonisation - ecoom.be

INCORPORATED Incorporated
AS Aktieselskab, Akciová Společnost
MBH Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung
A Société Anonyme, Società Per Azioni, …
KAISHA Kabushiki Kaisha
ANONYME Société Anonyme
C Pulic Limited Company, Limited Liability Company
L Società a Responsabilità Limitata
OY Osakeyhtiö
NV Naamloze Vennootschap
AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT Aktiengesellschaft
PLC Public Limited Company
SARL Société à responsabilité limitée
H Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung
Out of the 40 words having more than 1,000 occurrences, 25 are identified as legal form
indications or part of legal form indications. This does not mean that all those last words always
indicate a legal form. Especially short words can be an abbreviation for any other word or can
be an abbreviation of first name and middle names of private individuals. The context of the last
word within the name has to be taken into consideration before blindly removing legal form
indications. For example, “INCORPORATED” can always be removed but “A” will only be
removed if it is preceded by “S ” or “S. ”, or “S P ” or “S. P.".
So, for each of the 25 last words that potentially indicate a legal form, a thorough examination
is needed to identify all spelling variations appearing at the end of names and to verify that a
particular spelling variation really indicates a legal form and is not merely a coincidence.
For every identified last word, all names containing that word as the last word are scanned
thoroughly to identify all spelling variations that actually indicate a legal form. Based on these
examinations, search and replace rules could be constructed to remove and harmonize legal
form indications.
For example, if a name ends with “, A.G.”, this part of the name can safely by removed from the
end of the name and another field can be updated to “AG” to indicate the harmonized legal
form.
In total, 1,060 spelling variations of legal forms were identified at the end of names that can be
safely removed.
Table 15 contains all 52 search and replace statements for legal form AG to be removed at the
end of the name, with the keyword containing the spelling variation identified as legal form, the
number of occurrences of the spelling variation in all names, the harmonized legal form, and
remarks on how to replace the legal form. Appendix 2 contains all search and replace
statements for all legal forms to be removed at the end of a name.
Table 15: Search and replace statements for legal form AG to be removed at
end of name
KEYWORD NBR LEGAL FORM REMARKS
" AG" 6,156 AG Remove
" AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT" 1,141 AG Remove
" A.G." 246 AG Remove
" AG." 104 AG Remove
", AG" 96 AG Remove
" CO. AG" 67 AG Replace with " COMPANY"
" AG & CO." 43 AG Replace with " & COMPANY"
", A.G." 30 AG Remove
" CIE AG" 13 AG Replace with " COMPANY"
" CIE. AG" 11 AG Replace with " COMPANY"
" CO. AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT" 9 AG Replace with " COMPANY"
" AG & CO" 8 AG Replace with " & COMPANY"
" AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT & CO." 7 AG Replace with " & COMPANY"
", AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT" 6 AG Remove
" CO AG" 5 AG Replace with " COMPANY"
" + CO. AG" 5 AG Replace with " & COMPANY"
" AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT AG" 5 AG Remove
", AG." 5 AG Remove
30