Pre-Grant Patent Authority file layout Please Note: The Pre-Grant Authority file is limited Pre-Grant Publications, i.e., Patent Application Publications and Plant Patent Application Publications published beginning March 15, 2001. There is a Tab (character) between each field. The first field is thirteen (13) positions. The first two (2) positions contain the "Country Code". The next eleven (11) positions contain the "Pre-Grant Publication Number". The first four (4) positions of the Pre-Grant Publication Number is the (Gregorian) year that the Pre-Grant Publication was published. The second field is two (2) positions and contains the Pre-Grant Publication "Kind of Document Code". See the separate list of "Summary of Usage of USPTO Kind of Document Codes". The third field is the Publication Date of the Application. The Publication date is eight (8) numeric positions in the (YYYYMMDD) format. The fourth field is one (1) or two (2) positions and is used to identify missing and withdrawn Pre-Grant Publications. If the Pre-Grant Publication images are available for viewing this field is a blank (character). If the Pre-Grant Publication images are missing, this field will have an "MA". The USPTO does not have a copy of the missing document images in its collection. If the Pre-Grant Publication number is missing in the Classification Data System (CDS), this field will have an "MC". The USPTO has a copy of the documents in its collection but the CDS has no record. If the Pre-Grant Publication is withdrawn, this field will have a "W". Example only: US20010000001 A1 20010101 (The database contains the images) US20011234567 A1 20010614 MA (The images are missing from the database) US20011234567 A1 20010704 MC (The Pre-Grant Publication records are missing from the CDS database) US20012345678 A1 20010912 W (This is a withdrawn Pre-Grant Publication Application)