Anything to be aware of when buying "re-titled" ISO standards?

[Le Chiffre]

Apologies if this isn't the appropriate forum for this question...

There's a number of different places to buy standards online. Is there anything to be aware of when buying a "re-titled" ISO standard from another source? e.g. I bought EN ISO 13485:2003 from BSI (hence the EN prefix). I'm looking for ISO TR 14969:2004 and have come across DS/ISO/TR 14969:2004 for $50 less than a generic ISO TR 14969:2004. The DS prefix indicates it's a Danish Spec but this copy of the standard is apparently in English.

Any issues buying a DS or EN prefixed ISO standard (or in this case a technical report)? I can't get satisfactory answers from the standards' vendors without purchasing them first

If you're wondering why I'm "shopping around", it's because I bought ANSI/AAMI/ISO 14969:1999 a couple of months ago not realizing it's been superceded by the 2004 edition - ANSI make no mention of the document's status on the page where they offer it for sale! I'm appalled that a standards body doesn't take note of the guidance preached by its products and clearly label obsolete documents to prevent unintentional use - which is exactly what happened here

And having not ticked the box for eSubscription at the time of purchase, I am not able to benefit from the 1-year of alert emails that ANSI offer. Since it's actually a requirement of the ISO 13485 standard to keep abreast of changes and updates to standards, this is really infuriating!

 

[Craig H.]

Re: Purchasing ISO standards?

Hi,

Actually this has come up before - it does not matter which country the standard comes from. In fact, just within the last day or 2 it has been mentioned in the Cove that the Australians have an electronic version of some of the ISO standards available for very reasonable prices. You might want to try a search to get the particulars.

Several years ago I had a British and US copy of one of the ISO standards (9002, I think). I took the time to go through them side by side, and found spelling differences in 4 words (something like color, colour). Otherwise they were verbatim copies.