Complete Specification

This is a matter of British usage. It simply represents the final form of a patent's documentation. A patent and its number may stand simply and alone, with no Provisional Specifications or complication of numbers being associated with it.

Antique publications have on occasion given us patent numbers or filing dates which do in fact turn up within original patent documents, but only within them, not being the means through which the patent material is organized on Espacenet or other modern databases.

The Complete Specification stands in contrast to the Provisional Specification, on which page varied examples are fleshed out. One or more Provisional Specification may be involved in the build-up to the Complete Specification. Numbering protocols within this are not absolutely consistent. See Provisional Specification.

This all represents document publication or printing fairly well along in the process of an invention's being formally registered. It may represent a different emphasis or outlook relative to that of the French, in particular, in which the certificat d'addition is at least semantically and administratively handled as an add-on, relative to an initial or fundamental innovation, at least nominally and administratively distinct, as a document type, from the brevet. Within the British phraseology, "Provisional" status relative to "Complete" clearly treats the latter as having more true substance.

These are all matters of administrative culture, the international variability therein. These are matters of national temperament and national image.