# Improvement of "Patents" and term "no date"

**URL:** <https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/improvement-of-patents-and-term-no-date/1887>\
**Category:** CSL Evolution\
**Created:** [February 26, 2025, 9:29am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/improvement-of-patents-and-term-no-date/1887 "2025-02-26T09:29:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![POBrien](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@POBrien](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/POBrien)\
**Post date:** [February 26, 2025, 9:29am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/improvement-of-patents-and-term-no-date/1887/1 "2025-02-26T09:29:21Z")

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Hi,  
Working on a style I noticed that the Zotero field “ **Assignee** ” is not available in CSL. I used a workaround, but of course it’s not the most intuitive if there is an “Assignee” field right in front of you.  
Is there a plan to include this on the CSL and Zotero side?

Apart from that, I often make the mistake of using the term “ **no-date** ” only to be reminded by the validator that the actual term is called “no date”. I always wondered how it was chosen that certain terms have a dash, e.g. “no-place”, and some don’t?  
Is this something that we’d want to “fix”? Is that even possible given that there will be a bunch of styles already using it and then suddenly not be validating with a new version of CSL is released?

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**Author:** ![zepinglee](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/zepinglee/32/278_2.png) [@zepinglee](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/zepinglee)\
**Post date:** [February 26, 2025, 11:00am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/improvement-of-patents-and-term-no-date/1887/2 "2025-02-26T11:00:38Z")

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Additionally, should the Zotero field `country` of a patent be mapped to CSL’s `jurisdiction` which is defined as “Geographic scope of relevance (e.g. ‘US’ for a US patent …)”?

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**Author:** ![Denis\_Maier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8491ac/32.png) [@Denis\_Maier](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Denis_Maier)\
**Post date:** [February 26, 2025, 1:14pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/improvement-of-patents-and-term-no-date/1887/3 "2025-02-26T13:14:26Z")

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> [@POBrien](#):
>
> Apart from that, I often make the mistake of using the term “ **no-date** ” only to be reminded by the validator that the actual term is called “no date”. I always wondered how it was chosen that certain terms have a dash, e.g. “no-place”, and some don’t?  
> Is this something that we’d want to “fix”? Is that even possible given that there will be a bunch of styles already using it and then suddenly not be validating with a new version of CSL is released?

No special reason, just sloppyness. And yes, that should be harmonized in a future version. I think it should be possible to convert styles using the older term variant to the newer version. (IIRC, we’ve done similar things during the last update.)

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**Author:** ![bwiernik](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/bwiernik/32/438_2.png) [@bwiernik](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/bwiernik)\
**Post date:** [April 16, 2025, 3:05pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/improvement-of-patents-and-term-no-date/1887/4 "2025-04-16T15:05:47Z")

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In earlier CSL versions, many terms had spaces. In the CSL 1.0.2 update, all new terms used dashes instead for clarity and to avoid any potential future parsing issues. We didn’t align older terms at that time however.