ASC X12 has developed standards to facilitate the transmission of electronic business messages for over 30 years. The Data Interchange Standards Association (DISA) holds the copyright on the standards and other publications designed to facilitate the implementation of the standards on behalf of ASC X12. Users of the publications should be aware of the permissible uses, as well as the limitations on such usage, as outlined below.

Written permission of the copyright holders is required in the following situations:

• For any derivative work that will be distributed outside the corporate structure of the organization
• To reproduce large portions of the material for any use
• For any use not in conformance with the statements below

Provided that the material is properly cited, see Citation Format below, written permission is not required in the following situations:

• To reproduce small portions of the material for criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching or scholarship and research
• To reference codes, code descriptions, situational rules and other notes in internal implementation documents

All parties requesting permission to reproduce copyrighted material must follow the procedures listed below. The procedures apply to all draft, published, and withdrawn products. “Product” is defined as anything resulting from the effort of the ASC X12 membership.

Introduction of the product in the market place is not allowed until the final decision is communicated electronically or in writing from DISA.

Version 3 - Guidance for Developers of Proprietary Documents to Supplement Published ASC X12 Implementation Guides

Overview

ASC X12 publishes Type 3 Technical Reports, commonly known as Implementation Guides (IG), which define the data to be included in ASC X12 transactions sets for specific business purposes. These guides are copyrighted documents and must be purchased.

Supplemental documents (SD), commonly known as Companion Guides, contain information for creating transactions for a specific trading partner based on an associated ASC X12 IG. Supplemental documents can include, but are not limited to spreadsheets, word documents, web presentations, and help files. Supplemental documents do not have to be labeled as companion guides.

Publishers of Supplemental Documents may use the procedures contained in the "Requesting Permission to Reproduce X12 Material" section of this IP statement, to ensure that their documents do not violate ASC X12 IP Policy.

Purpose

This document is ASC X12’s statement of limitations for SD content. It is intended to supplement, not replace or overrule, the associated IG copyrights and ASC X12’s Fair Use statement. SD content must conform to the restrictions of this document to avoid infringing on ASC X12 copyrights and related intellectual property rights. This document does not address additional information that a trading partner may include in a SD that is unrelated to the IG but related to the interchange of electronic information between the trading partners.

ASC X12 Implementation Guide Structure

IGs organize information into several sections as defined below.

• Chapter 1 – Purpose and Business Information.
  • Sections 1-9 are standard; each section may have standard sub-sections and IG specific sub-sections.
  • Sections 10 and higher are IG-specific.
• Chapter 2 – Transaction Set
  • Sections 1-2 are standard; each section may have standard sub-sections and IG specific sub-sections.
  • Sections 3-4 list the transaction set segments and data elements.
  • Sections 5-6 contain the section 3-4 information for a second transaction if the implementation guide defines two transmissions.
• Chapter 3 – Examples
  • Business scenarios and associated ASC X12 transmissions.
• Appendices
  • A – External Code Source
  • B – Nomenclature
  • C – EDI Control Directory
  • D – Change Summary
  • E – Glossary
  • F-Z – IG specific appendices

Supplemental Document Scope

SDs may contain supplemental information for one or more ASC X12 IGs as limited by the guidelines listed below.

Supplemental Document Content Guidelines

SDs must:

Be used in conjunction with an associated IG; they must not be stand-alone requirements documents.

• Conform to all the requirements of the associated IG.
• Abide by ASC X12’s Fair Use and Copyright statements.
• Use the full official name, including the unique identifier, at the first reference to any IG. For example, ASC X12/005010X212 Health Care Claim Status Request and Response (276/277). If a shortened title will be used for any IG, the first reference must include the shortened title to be used.
  • The acronym for secondary references may either be the unique identifier (example 005010X212) or the name (example: Health Care Claim Status Request and Response) of the IG.

SDs may:

• Include trading partner-specific requirements that clarify the IG instructions, where specifically permitted by this document. Trading partner specific instructions may be used to:
  • Clarify an IG example, based on proprietary instructions.
  • Add examples specific to proprietary instructions.
  • Clarify specific processing intentions related to IG requirements.
  • Example: Clarification that one or more codes from the IG code list is preferred or not processed.
    • “Not processed” means it will not be recognized in internal processing, it does not mean the transaction can be rejected if the specified code is present.
    • “Preferred” means that internal processes expect that specific value to be transmitted.
  • Example: Clarification of the use of loops/segments/elements in the IGs identified by situational rules stating trading partner requirements control usage:
    • “Required when the payer’s adjudication is known to be impacted…”
    • “Required when such transmission is required under the insurance contract…”
  • Indicate the number of repetitions actually used within the transaction processing application for loops or segments without repetition limitations in the IG.
• Identify necessary trading partner information to initiate or enable the communications between trading partners.
• Include the information from HIPAA IG Interpretation Requests (found at www.x12n.org/portal) as a reference for trading partner specific instructions, as long as the ASC X12 or X12N Interpretation is explicitly referenced.

SDs must not:

• Be a material duplication of the associated IG.
• Contradict, countermand or duplicate any requirement of the associated IG.
• Contain material duplication of a section of the associated IG, unless a citation approval has been issued by ASC X12.
• Include tutorial information about ASC X12 syntax, the underlying transaction set or related transaction sets.
• Include tutorial information about the use and interpretation of an IG.
• Add, modify or delete any defining, explanatory, or clarifying content (Section 1), example (Sections 2 and 3) or Appendix (Section 4) information.
• Add, modify or delete any requirements, including loop, segment or element names, notes or rules, examples, appendix, or code list subsets from Section 2.

Glossary

ASC X12
ASC X12 is an ANSI Accredited Standards Committee (“ASC”) for the cross-industry development, maintenance, and publication of electronic data exchange standards, based on, but not limited to ASC X12 EDI, XML, and UN/EDIFACT formats. ASC X12 defines requirements of electronic business document content, and serves as a key player in international forums by contributing to the universal core component work and message design architecture. These key ASC X12 initiatives propose to create new and improved forms of data sharing, enhance business processes, reduce costs, and expand organizations’ reach.

Implementation Guide
Instructions for using an ASC X12 standard transaction for a specific business purpose. These instructions will promote consistent and uniform implementations between trading partners.

Supplemental Document
Supplemental information for creating transactions for a specific trading partner, while ensuring compliance with the associated ASC X12 implementation guide

X12N
Insurance Subcommittee, the subcommittee of ASC X12 that defines EDI standards for the insurance industry

The basic style below is adapted from the Modern Language Association (MLA) Style Manual and by convention includes line breaks and an indent for each successive line:

Author Name. “Title: Subtitle, Figure number, 
	if appropriate, Segment ID - Name, if appropriate.” 
	Title of Book, identifier.
	Publisher, Date of publication. <URL>. Page Number(s).

Examples

If someone wants to reproduce figure 1.1 of 005010X221, the choices are:

Place a footnote reference number in relation to the reproduced figure and place the following as the footnote, or place the following directly below the figure:

Accredited Standards Committee X12, Insurance
	Subcommittee, ASC X12N. “1.4.1 Information Flows, Fig. 1.1.” 
	Health Care Claim Payment/Advice (835), 005010X221. 
	Washington Publishing Company, Apr. 2006.
	<http://www.wpc-edi.com>. 3.

Or place in-line with their text an abbreviated citation:

The 835 presents an “Information Flow” figure, reproduced below, illustrating the flow of information from payer to payee (005010X221 1).

The style above requires that a works-cited list be created and placed at the end of the document. Each citation is assigned a number. In the example above, the 1 refers to the first citation in the list; which appears in the works cited list like this:

1. Accredited Standards Committee X12, Insurance Subcommittee, ASC X12N. 
	“1.4.1 Information Flows, Fig. 1.1.”  
	Health Care Claim Payment/Advice (835), 005010X221. 
	Washington Publishing Company, Apr. 2006.
	<http://www.wpc-edi.com>. 3.

A span of page numbers is appropriate when the quoted material is on consecutive pages. For example, to refer to the payer business contact information segment:

Accredited Standards Committee X12, Insurance Subcommittee, ASC X12N.
	“PER – Payer Business Contact Information.”
	Health Care Claim Payment/Advice (835), 005010X221.
	Washington Publishing Company, Apr. 2006.
	<http://www.wpc-edi.com>. 94-96.

This is version 4, published on May 12th, 2010. Changes from version 3 are:

In the Requesting Permission to Reproduce X12 Materials chapter in the paragraph numbered 2, two sentences are added:

Version 3 was published on March 20th, 2010. Changes from version 2 are:

In the Requesting Permission to Reproduce X12 Materials chapter in the first sentence.

All parties requesting permission to reproduce copyrighted material must follow the procedures listed below.

In the Publication of Supplemental Documents chapter, a third paragraph was added to the Overview section.

Publishers of Supplemental Documents may use the procedures contained in the "Requesting Permission to Reproduce X12 Material" section of this IP statement, to ensure that their documents do not violate ASC X12 IP Policy.

Version 2 was published on February 5th, 2010. Changes from version 1 are:

In the Publication of Supplemental Documents chapter under the heading SDs must not:

• Modify Add, modify or delete any defining, explanatory, or clarifying content (Section 1), example (Sections 2 and 3) or Appendix (Section 4) information.
• Modify Add, modify or delete any requirements, including loop, segment or element names, notes or rules, examples, appendix, or code list subsets from Section 2.