Patent Search Tools

Engr. Maria Concepcion S. ZabalaIP Rights Specialist II

IP Search and Documentation Division

Patent information is available from

both free and fee-based sources.

FREE SOURCES OF PATENT

INFORMATION

Newspapers, journals

Radio, television

Internet, Information databases

Company Publications

Official publications by government authorities such as reports, statistics, etc.

FREE SOURCES OF PATENT

INFORMATION

Patent Documents

PATENT DATABASES

Free DatabasesCommercial Databases

FINDING SPECIFIC PATENT

INFORMATION

Patent document reference numbers and dates

Applicants or inventors names

Keywords

Patent classification

Patent document reference

numbers and dates

Application number Publication number Priority number if filed initially in another

country

Date of Filing Date of Publication Priority dates

Novartis, BMW, Sony, Mittal, etc.

Dyson, Smith, etc.

Applicants or inventors name

Note: Be careful since same applicant may use differentversions of their name, e.g. International BusinessMachines, IBM, IBM Ltd., etc.

Keywords

These are words or phrases which describe essential technical features of the invention

Keywords can be searched in the title, abstract, description or claims

Remember:

Search for synonyms e.g. using specialized dictionaries

Search for word variations e.g. US plow vs. GB plough

Languages: Only EN documents retrieved with EN

keywords

Truncation/ word-stemming uses wildcard characters such as * or ? to

substitute for any other character or characters when added next to a string of search terms.

Examples:attach* - attach, attached, attaching, attachment,

attachable*attach - reattach (re-attach)*attach* - reattaching (re-attaching), reattached (re-attached)

speciali?ation specialisation, specializationcommerciali?ation commercialisation, commercialization

How to Limit or Widen Keyword Search?

Phrase searching using Examples:

electrical conductor, laser beam, etc.

Boolean Operators

used to join words or concepts with defined TRUE or FALSE

operators such AND, OR, NOT, XOR, NEAR


Boolean Logic Overview

All things that are Cars

All things that are Airplanes

All things that are both Cars and Airplanes

Search : Car OR Airplane

Result : Will return anything that is a car or an airplane

OR searches are inclusive and return many results!

Boolean Logic OR

Search : Car AND Airplane

Result : Will only return things that are both cars and airplanes.

AND searches are exclusive and will narrow your results!

Things that are both Cars and Airplanes

Boolean Logic AND

Search : Car NOT Airplane

Result : Will return cars, but not cars which are airplanes

NOT searches are exclusive and will narrow your results!

Boolean Logic NOT

NEAR Operator Documents having both the words car and

airplane within a certain number of words of each other

Useful when searching variations on phrases containing two terms, e.g. airplane with engine of car, car with parts of an airplane,, etc.

Check default value of distance


Parentheses (nesting) to clarify/order search queries

wheel AND (steel OR alloy)

not wheel AND steel OR alloy

Note:

Using parenthesis is a way of forcing the order of processing of logical expressions

Has great impact on the search results


SUMMARY PATENTSCOPE ESPACENET USPTO IPDL PHIL PAT

SEARCH

Boolean Operators

AND, OR, NOT, ANDNOT

AND, OR, NOT OR, AND,ANDNOT

AND, OR AND, OR

Wildcard ?, * ?, #, * $ (space), (tab), #, $, *, ., , - , /,

?, etc.

*, ?

Phrase Searching

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Proximity Operator

NEAR, ~ prox/distance

Selecting the Right Search tools

Patent Collections (Which Countries or Regions?)

Document Types (Patent Applications? Granted Patents? Utility Models? Industrial Designs? More?)

Document Elements (Bibliographic Data? Descriptions? Claims?)

Data Coverage

Languages (Multiple language versions? Translations?)

FREE PATENT DATABASES

WIPO PatenScope

EPO Espacenet

USPTO Patent Database

JPO IPDL

IPOPHL PhilPat Search

Name PATENTSCOPE

Patent Collection 10,116,437 patent documents

Document Types patents

Document Elements Bibliographic Data, Description, Claim, National Phase Information, Machine Translations, Patent Application Related Documents, Full-text Documents

Data Coverage 1978 present (PCT)

Language Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Vietnamese

http://www.wipo.int/wipogold/en/

PATENTSCOPE

PATENTSCOPE

SIMPLE SEARCH:

Select the field of interest; Enter keywords; Select the collections you are interested in; Hit the SEARCH button

PATENTSCOPE

ADVANCED SEARCH:

Enter keywords/Boolean expression/field codes etc.;Select the language in which you would liketo perform the search; Select the collection/s you are interestedin; and Hit the SEARCH button.

PATENTSCOPE

FIELD COMBINATION:

Select the field/s of interest using the arrow of the drop-down menu; Use the AND/OR boxes to add or includefields; If you would like to add more fields or remove one or more fields, please click on:

PATENTSCOPE

FIELD COMBINATION:

Select the language in which you would like to perform the search; Select the collection/s you are interested in; and Hit the SEARCH button.

CLIR- Automatic Mode

Enter the search query in the search box.

Select the language of your query.

Select the Expansion mode:

AUTOMATIC will generate the results immediately without any further user input.

Decide on the balance between PRECISION and RECALL for your query.

Click on SUBMIT QUERY

PATENTSCOPE

CLIR- Supervised Mode

Enter the search query in the search box.

Select the language of your query.

Select the Expansion mode:

SUPERVISED will allow you to select the technical domain associated with your query and the variants relevant to your query.

Decide on the balance between PRECISION and RECALL for your query.

Click on NEXT

PATENTSCOPE


Select the technical domains.

Click on Expand Synonyms.

Select the variants relevant to your query or ADD VARIANT if you know a variant that is not in the proposed list.

Click on TRANSLATE SELECTED TERMS or START OVER if necessary

Define the fields in which the search should be performed

PATENTSCOPE


Untick the STEMMING option if you would like to have results including only the exact term of your search.

Click on SUBMIT QUERY

PATENTSCOPE

http://worldwide.espacenet.com

Name ESPACENET

Patent Collection More than 70 million patent documents worldwide

Document Types patents

Document Elements Bibliographic Data, Description, Claims, Mosaics/ Drawings, Original Document, Machine Translations, Cited and Citing Documents, INPADOC legal status, and INPADOC patent family

Data Coverage 1836 - present

Language English, French, German

ESPACENET

SMART SEARCH

All you have to do is to enter a word or words describing the type of invention youre looking for and click on SEARCH.

Alternatively, you can type in the number of a patent document, the name of an inventor or company or the date or year of a patent document.

ESPACENET

SMART SEARCH

ESPACENET

QUICK SEARCH Allows you to carry out a simple search using a

keyword, an inventor or a company name.

ADVANCED SEARCH Advanced search can be used if you want to combine

various search terms. For example, you can search for patent documents from a particular year and country that have specific words in their title or abstract.

ESPACENET

NUMBER SEARCH A quick way to get a patent document when you

know the publication, application or priority number. You do not need to know the exact format of the number fuzzy logic takes care of that.

CLASSIFICATION SEARCH the option to use if you are interested in finding all

the patent publications in a particular technical area a powerful tool used by professional patent searchers, it can take a bit of time to get used to, but it is usually worth the effort.

ESPACENET

http:// patft.uspto.gov/

Name USPTO

Patent Collection US

Document Types Patents, utility models, industrial designs, plant varieties

Document Elements Full Documents (HTML and PDF)

Data Coverage 1790- present

Language English

QUICK SEARCH Select a year or range of years to search from the Select

years to search drop-down menu.

Enter a term in the text entry box labeled Term 1.

Select which field to apply to Term 1 by using the Field 1 drop-down menu located to the right of the Term 1 box.

Select a Quick Operator (AND, OR, or ANDNOT) from the menu located between the two Term boxes.

Enter a term in the text entry box labeled Term 2.

Select which field to apply to Term 2 by using the Field 2 drop-down menu located to the right of the Term 2 box.

Hit the SEARCH button.

USPTO

ADVANCED SEARCH Select a year or range of years to search from

the Select years to search drop-down menu.

Type your search statement into the Text Entry box marked Query.


USPTO

PATENT NUMBER SEARCH Type the patent number or numbers into the box. If

you include more than one number, they should be separated by a space. It is not necessary to include commas or to capitalize the prefix.


USPTO

http:// www.ipdl.inpit.go.jp/homepg_e.ipdl

Name IPDL

Patent Collection Japan

Document Types Patents

Document Elements Patent abstracts , Bibliographic data, original documents


Language English

TEXT SEARCH You can look for any word that is included in the Applicant,

Title of invention, and Abstract part of the PAJ.

You can enter multiple keywords separated by a SPACE in one box like "computer semiconductor". Select AND/OR operation from the drop-down list on the right.

The maximum number of characters that can be entered is 200.

In the publication date, you can search for exact date, date range, after or before a date.

You can also enter IPC symbol.

Click "Search" to perform the search after entering your query.

IPDL

NUMBER SEARCH If you want to find a particular document from application/

publication/ patent number or Appeal/trial number, please select an applicable number type and then enter the number in the box.


Note:

You can enter several numbers by separating them with

spaces.

IPDL

http:// patents.ipophil.gov.ph/patsearch2/

Name IPDL

Patent Collection Philippines

Document Types Published Pending Patent Applications, Granted Patents, Utility Models, Industrial Designs

Document Elements Bibliographic data, Original documents (PDF)


Language English

FIELD COMBINATION SEARCH Select the field/s of interest using the drop-

down menu;

Use the AND/OR boxes to add or include fields;


PHIL PAT SEARCH

OTHER FREE (PATENT) DATABASES

KEY POINTS

At present no database has complete coverage of all patent documents ever published worldwide

Make full use of the Web. Sometimes it is worth searching the internet as well as patent databases. Patents or inventors often feature on the internet, giving additional input for follow-up searches in patent databases.

Specific patent searches are sometimes best conducted using both the information available on the Web and in patent databases.

HELP!

Intellectual Property Center#28 Upper McKinley RoadMcKinley Hill Town CenterFort Bonifacio, Taguig City1634 Philippineswww.ipophil.gov.ph238-6300