DIN Standards/Patents

What are DIN Standards?

A standard is drawn up by a technical committee (DIN, VDE) and is not legally binding in and of itself.

Standards can be turned into established law by the legislator (law or ordinance). In addition, by drafting a corresponding contract, standards can be agreed upon as binding.

Due to their lengthy development process (drafting, formulation, adoption), they do not usually reflect the current state of the art. In this context, one also speaks of "the state of standardization".
A distinction is made between standards at national or superordinate (European, international) level.

DIN Standard

National standards are labeled by the prefixed abbreviation "DIN" followed by a number "1234" if they have been devised by the German Institute for Standardization (DIN e.V.). Standards are often multi-part works.

A part of a standard is indicated by a number, separated by a hyphen. The issue date is suffixed after a colon (e.g. DIN 18040-1:2010-10 - Construction of accessible buildings).

VDE Standard

Another national standardization body is VDE Association for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies.

Together with DIN, it forms the DKE for the development of DIN VDE standards (e.g. DIN VDE 0100-444: 2010-10 - Protection against voltage disturbances).
Standards organizations outside of Germany are, for example, ANSI (American National Standards Institute) or BSI (British Standards Institution).

DIN EN Standard

In addition, European standards that have been turned into valid German standards are labeled with the designation “DIN EN” (e.g. DIN EN 1860-1:2013-04 – Appliances, solid fuels and firelighters for barbecueing).

European standards are drawn up by the three standardization bodies CEN, CENELEC and ETSI.

DIN ISO Standard

In English language regions, the term „standard“ is synonymous with the German term "Norm“. In the field of electrical engineering, information technology and computer science, IEEE standards are the most common standards.

Analogous to European standards, international standards are labeled with "DIN ISO" (e.g. DIN ISO 8601-1:2020-12 Date and time).

International standards organizations are ISO (International Organization for Standardization) or IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission).

If an international standard is concurrently a European standard and has been adopted by DIN, the labeling is "DIN EN ISO" (e.g. DIN EN ISO 3758:2013-12 - Textiles - Care labeling code using symbols).

Collection and Accessibility

The university library of the RPTU in Kaiserslautern serves as one of the two official Standards Infopoints (formerly DIN Standards Display Points) of the German Institute for Standardization (DIN e.V.) in Rhineland-Palatinate.

The Standards Infopoint is located in the central library, building 32, in the area of the Central Lending desk.

In the Nautos database you can search for fulltexts of DIN standards, VDI standards as well as information on other standards, technical rules from numerous European and international organisations for standardization and EU directives. The database includes approx. 2.5 million records from 27 countries.

Nautos (formely Perinorm)

Nautos provides fulltext access to:

VDI standards (established by the Association of German Engineers)
all currently valid DIN standards
DIN standard drafts
international standards, if they have been adopted by national regulations (DIN EN, DIN ISO, etc.)
as well as historical DIN standards (most of the DIN standards withdrawn since 1978)

DIN standards with VDE marking and VDE-only standards can be accessed in printed form at the Standards Infopoint.
The VDE Standards Library provides full-text access to all valid VDE regulations, including drafts, within the university's network. Extensive bibliographic information is available for withdrawn and historical VDE standards. All DIN VDE standards are also included. Standards access is restricted to on-screen displays only. Printing and saving is not possible.

PLEASE NOTICE:

DIN e.V. grants Standards Infopoints and their authorized users a non-exclusive right to use the electronic collection of standards. The license conditions must be accepted before using Nautos.