How do the Federal Circuit 101 cases affect the BPAI post-Bilski?

Abstract Idea, BPAI, Patent Mining, Subject Matter No Responses »
Dec 202011

The Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences takes into account a number of authorities when deciding appeals. First at the BPAI’s disposal are the higher courts of the Federal Circuit and Supreme Court. Then there are the rulemaking guidelines issued by the PTO. Then of course there’s the MPEP. I’ve been interested in the whether the Federal Circuit affects the BPAI in terms of the number of rejections the Board issues.

Appeals before the Board are initiated after an examiner rejects a claim at least twice. The applicant, rather than continuing to spend time arguing with the examiner, can elect to appeal to the Board where a panel of three judges will hear both arguments. The Board then has three options. It can reverse the rejection, it can affirm the rejection, or it can introduce a new rejection. Since Bilski v. Kappos has been decided, the Board has used § 101 to reverse 95 times, affirm 166 times, and introduce 65 new rejections. Up until today, the percent of new rejections to how many times the Board has acted is about 20%.

To see whether the Board is affected by Federal Circuit cases, I divided the time frames up into intervals roughly 6 months apart when big Federal Circuit cases were decided. Here are the Federal Circuit cases: Research Corp v. Microsoft, Ass’n for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad, and Ultramercial v. Hulu. At times, there were two Federal Circuit cases decided within a short period of time, which I just combined.

 

A little about the time frames. The first time period is from June 28, 2010 to December 9, 2010, starting with the Supreme Court case Bilski v. Kappos and ending with the first big Federal Circuit decision decided on the merits of § 101. In this time period, the Board introduced new rejections 22.4% of the time, higher than the overall average. This was likely a result of the recent Supreme Court case and the PTO publishing post-Bilski guidelines a month after Bilski. In addition to these factors, two Federal Circuit cases that did not receive that much attention mentioned § 101 subject matter patent-eligibility: Intervet v. Merial Ltd included a dissent with a 101 focus and Astrazeneca v. Apotex was mostly decided on other grounds, but did mention subject matter. Both cases used 101 to poke holes in the patent at issue and the effect may have been felt at the BPAI.

Research Corp v. Microsoft was a subject matter game changer in the sense that it broadened the Bilski analysis by saying that unless the invention was very obviously an abstract idea, the invention should be statutory subject matter. As noted on Ryan Alley’s blog, the case looked as if it would affect the BPAI’s decisions when followed by the BPAI. Prometheus v. Mayo was decided over a week later which was also favorable to patent-eligible subject matter, especially for diagnostic methods. This time period saw new rejections dip to 18.4%.

Next, AMP v. USPTO.  The now-famous gene patenting case is familiar to most. While the take-home message from this Federal Circuit case is that the District Court was wrong in concludingi gene patents are not statutory subject matter, the method claims which were affirmed received far less attention. As noted on the Patents4Life blog post, the method claim analysis was very brief and the arguments not very well developed. Very shortly after AMP, the Federal Circuit decided Cybersource v. Retail Decisions. These two cases seemed to propel the BPAI forward with new rejections, cresting to 24.3%.

Ultramercial v. Hulu was another game changer. Like Research Corp, Ultramercial was another Judge Radar decision which seemed to broaden the 101 analysis from the earlier cases of AMP and Cybersource. This decision until the present has seen a dip in the number of new rejections at the BPAI to 16.7%.

In conclusion, it is interesting to see how the patent tides of change can be felt not only in the higher courts, but at the Board and the effect most likely trickles down to each examiner. I found that differences in rejections in the different time frames were interesting and expected, but not all the time frames were statistically significant at an acceptable confidence level.

All data was mined from the website http://www.bpai101.com/decisions. The word “affirmed” was searched in the outcome field for those decisions that were affirmed. The word “reversed” was searched for reversed decisions and the word “new” was searched for new rejections. Some cases performed multiple operations in one decisions, such as affirming one claim, reversing another or introducing a new rejection. In such cases of multiple operations, I included each operation separately. For instance, one decision could potentially yield a reversal, affirmation, and new rejection. Most decisions, however, had only one operation.

Posted by Trent at 8:41 am

28 Ways to Retrieve a Patent Document

Patent Mining 2 Responses »
Apr 272011

You may have a subscription to a patent mining database that can access all sorts of patent documents, but what if you want to retrieve that document for yourself? Many services allow for retrieving patent documents–whether that includes patent applications, issued patents or file histories. These services can deliver your document to you in physical or electronic form. Some of these services are subscription-based, others are free. There are so many options and here is my list of 28 of them.

  • Advanced Patent Services – Specializes in obtaining US and Foreign Patent File Histories/Wrappers.  (Formerly also known as FileShopper)
  • Delphion – Online patent downloads.
  • Discount Patent Service – Specializes in obtaining both US and non-US patent file histories, authentication, legalization, and certification of documents and all other patent related documents. Available to download via web at a low cost.
  • EU Pat Register Plus – Allows for patent information including file histories, for European patents.
  • FILDATA – Italian patent and utility models.
  • Fiz Karlsruhe Autodoc (Europe) – Automated document delivery broker system.
  • FreePatentsOnline – provides fast, free patent searching, with powerful features such as PDF downloading, search management functions, collaborative document folders, and more. Like the company name says, it’s free.
  • GetIPDL – Software that downloads the text and the images from JPO, USPTO, EPO, DEPTATIS, WIPO, IP Australia, CIPO, SIPO of P. R. China, Thai IPIC website and merges and converts to PDF for printing. It includes features, such as SmartTag, which expands the Internet Explorer context menu.
  • Get The Patent – Patent image downloads from US, EP, WO, GB, DE, FR, JP, CH.
  • Google Patents – Allows for download of US issued patents and patent applications.
  • INCOM – Offers patent document delivery and direct access to the INPADOC PFS und PRS data of more than 65 Patent Offices worldwide.
  • Information Specialties Corp. – Full service paper document delivery in addition to web delivery.
  • IP Data Corporation – Current and back-year bulk data for most major authorities with Images (TIF or PDF) and full text available in several formats (this includes subscriptions). Download U.S. and foreign patents and applications from our document library. They also publish US IP manuals in soft cover and 3-ring (CFR-37, US Code, TMEP, TBMP & MPEP).
  • IP-Discover – Free software to search, download, and manage patents and applications from the public patent servers. Demo available.
  • Matheo Patent – Downloads patents from Espacenet and USPTO automatically according to your request criteria, constitutes and updates your local database, integrates many analysis tools, and generates graphic visualizations and personal printable reports.
  • MicroPatent – XML and more than 50 million documents from 40+ countries. Electronic file histories available, too.
  • Minesoft PatentOrder – Instantly download PDF patent documents from over 40 countries (incl. PCT, US, EP on day of publication). Electronic EP Filewrappers, patent family/legal status reports, available via the Web, or either as Intranet or PC Desktop software.
  • Pat2PDF – Pat2PDF.com is a service started to convert the native U.S. patent documents into industry standard PDF documents. Since that time, it’s grown to meet other patent viewing and searching needs.
  • Patent Fetcher – Offers PDFs of all U.S. and most foreign patents and patent applications for a fee of $0.65 per document, regardless of size, via the Web site.
  • Patentec – Patent documents in paper and electronic form, and electronic file wrappers.
  • Patent Imaging – Patent documents and file histories via download.
  • PatentPleeze – With it you can download unlimited full (or partial) patents from most countries (From Esp@cenet, USPTO, CIPO and Depatis). You can analyze downloaded documents (search rank..). You can view documents with text and images side by side and you can create a database of patents,  and you can Email patents with one click.
  • The Patent Supply Co. – Provides low-cost, searchable PDFs for U.S. patents and applications for as low as $0.49 per document. They also offer Enhanced Patent™ document sets that include separate, commenting-enabled patent and drawings PDFs. With the Enhanced Patent document sets, practitioners can add their notes directly to the PDFs, search the text, and view a patent’s text and drawings side-by-side. All of the PDFs are compressed and bookmarked to the major sections. Orders are zipped into a single file for easy downloading. Free trial is available.
  • Questel-Orbit – Patent Delivery Service gives access to an extensive, growing patent information file that covers more than 30 countries. The Patent Delivery Service is an interactive solution that offers speed, value-for-money and flexibility.
  • Rapidpat – Document delivery and US data search engine.
  • Reedfax – Delivering copies of patent & trademark documents since 1992. Patent Images – any issued US patent and most foreign, Certified patent & trademark documents, File Histories/Wrappers, Instant Japanese Patent Machine Translations, Fully certified manual translations and Hand delivery services to the USPTO.
  • Specialized Patent Services – Patent File wrappers, Large database of imaged files, Issued, Published, Re examinations, Interference. 703-415-1555
  • Thomson Innovation for ordering patents and Thomson File Histories for file histories. These services recently replaced the Thomson Patent Store. Subscription required.

Much thanks to http://piug.org/vendors.php who inspired this post.

Posted by Trent at 11:02 am

The "Best of" Free Patent Search

Innovation, Patent Law, Patent Mining, Patents, Shoutout 2 Responses »
Apr 112011

I sometimes take for granted what life would be like without Google. The ability to instantaneously get almost any information for free is simply amazing. A crucial component of practicing patent law in any area involves gathering the right information. What are the related patents? What language is used in similar patents? Does the invention stand apart from the published applications? Recently, I have been on a quest to find the best services that promote Google’s mantra: publicly available, fast, useful and comprehensive. I found that there’s no dominant, one-size-fits-all service; a lot depends on what you want to search for. Here, I compare 12 publicly available services that tailor to the English language. After my analysis of the strengths and weaknesses, I compare the results of actual test queries to come up with a “best of” list of three services. Ironically, my “best of” list does not include Google. Skip to the Best Of here.

Compared sites

Searching for patent information is tricky for a number of reasons. First, different search engines provide different search capabilities. Some allow you to search for terms that are in close proximity. Some allow for complex combined, boolean search logic (and, or, not). Some allow for wildcards so that you can generate a very expansive result list. In addition to all these search factors, there are differing options of searching through different fields. Some allow you to search through only certain fields at a time (title, abstract, specification, etc), while others allow you to combine the fields. This is why it’s difficult to come up with a list of “best of” list because they are all so different. Click on the links below to be redirected to the corresponding analysis below.

Boliven

Boliven has an extensive database of 60 million patents and patent-applications. It includes these databases: US, EPO, PCT, JPO, KIPO, INPADOC.

I like the interface, as shown above. By default you can search through the entire fields, but if you want to drill down more specifically, you can use the Advanced Search. The big drawback to Boliven is that by trying to make money through subscription service, Boliven limits you to 30 results if you are not a paid subscriber. If you have a very specific query, this should be no problem though. If you would like a free 30-day trial, you can go to this site: www.boliven.com/freetrials. You will be prompted to enter some information. Once you submit that, you need to enter a promo code. The code you can enter for 30 days of Boliven bliss is TrentOstler3. Try it out.

Boliven has limited, but good analytical tools for registered users that do not pay the subscription fee. Also, the search syntax allows for proximity, boolean, wildcard, grouping, and even fuzzy searching. Here is a diagram of the advanced searching syntax:

Canadian Patent Database

This service provides over 2 million patent documents from Canada since 1924. Full document images including cover and abstract are available from 1975 to the present.

The syntax is simple and straightforward.

 

Esp@cenet

Esp@cenet also has an extensive database of 70 million patent documents. The service offers full text search for EPO and PCT patents and applications. In addition, it includes the English abstracts of INPADOC.  You can select and query individual countries in the country’s native language too.

I found the interface straightforward enough. The syntax did not allow for wildcard or complex searching, however.

FreePatentsOnline

FreePatentsOnline is great. The database includes US (applications and patents), EPO, Abstracts of Japan, and PCT. Notably, you have the option the ability to download original patent documents. In addition, FreePatentsOnline recently added non-patent literature so that you can now search the contents of several thousand journals concurrently with your patent search. Very nice.

The syntax for search queries is intuitive. They use the forward slash syntax that the PTO uses, which takes some getting used to. But the options for advanced searching, as provided below, give you the ability to do some intense searching.

Google Patents

The database is somewhat limited to only US patents and applications, a little over 7 million of them. Also, a search query does not show how many results were generated. You just get the 1-10 that appear on the initial page, then it’s a matter of clicking “0″ after “o” to see how many more results there are. When dealing with a broad search term, this can be frustrating.

But what Google Patents lacks in coverage and results, it makes up for in speed and familiarity. Almost everyone knows how to use Google. It’s fast and gives you relevant results first. I use it to quickly look up filing dates. I also enjoy the “search within this document” feature.  Sometimes you need the text of an original claim in a patent or patent application. But PAIR only provides the PDF version. Google allows you to convert any words on the patent to text.

The advanced search options allow for more functional searching, but I couldn’t find proximity, wildcard, or advanced boolean searching capabilities. I understand why regular Google doesn’t use such searching styles, as there may be more advanced ways of providing relevant results, but I think this is a weakness for Google Patents to not include it.

KIPRIS

KIPRIS includes 4.5 million patent documents. In addition to patents, KIPRIS houses IPR applications, legal status information and trial information. Plus since 1996, KIPRIS has been run on behalf of KIPO.

The interface is simple and intuitive. The advanced searching also provides a lot of options. Here is the syntax:

Patent Lens

Patent Lens is another great service. Boasting 10,870,431 patent documents, Patent Lens covers US, EPO, PCT and Australia jurisdictions. I like the ability to analyze particular results to see what the patent family is. For instance, if I’m looking at a US application, I can see where else in the world it was filed. Also of interest to me is the Patent Lens Sequence Project, which allows you to search through 80 million DNA and protein sequences disclosed in patents.

The advanced searching is also robust, with boolean logic and proximity searching capabilities.

Patent Surf

An interesting service, Patent Surf primarily focuses its search engine on natural language, rather than use boolean syntax. You can enter a word, phrase, paragraph, or even page and the search engine will generate the most relevant results using relationships that are stored in their database.

The syntax is simple, use natural language! If you want to emphasize a particular word, you can do so with an asterisk–even multiple times.

PatSnap

Great service! This neat and organized interface reminds me of Google. Not only is the interface sleek, it provides additional features that allow for analytics. You can organize your results by assignee, inventor, filing years, patent family. You can also easily export your results, downloading multiple patents. You can also subscribe to receive RSS feeds for particular queries. The database is extensive, including US, EPO, and PCT patents. It is even more extensive, adding Norway, China, Korea, and Japan, if you wish to subscribe to the monthly subscription.

The searching syntax is user-friendly when using the field search, as you can input queries for particular patent sections. The “command line” is a little different, but looks powerful.

 

Sumo Brain

SumoBrain is a useful tool for searching major patent collections. The database includes US (applications and patents), EPO documents, PCT, and JP abstracts. It compares well with other free patent search services in terms of managing queries and saving records.

 

The search syntax is straightforward, using the slash syntax for particular section searching. The weighting operators are worth checking out as a different way to hone searches. The search syntax they provide is the same as FreePatentsOnline’s document.

 

USPTO

The PTO provides two services, PatFT which searches the issued patents and AppFT, which searches the published applications. PatFt provides full text patents since 1976. AppFT provides the full-text applications published since March 2001.

The USPTO’s website is still kind of 1990s in its design. It’s not fancy, doesn’t have analytical options, just provides the results in bare form.

Both services operate using a basic search engine. You have to get the hang of using the syntax.

WIPO PatentScope

Great service. PatentScope is made of two databases, each with its own search interface–the International Applications search, and the National Collections search. The National Collections includes additional breadth in that it includes the international document (PCT) plus individual countries. The full-text searching capabilities include PCT, African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO), Brazil (BR), Cuba (CU), Europe (EP), Israel (IL), Mexico (MX), Morocco (MC), Singapore (SG), South Africa (ZA), Spain (ES) and Vietnam (VN). Less than full text for many other countries Argentina (AR), Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Uruguay, Vietnam. This adds up to a total of 7,752,536 patent documents, as noted on their website.

The syntax is straightforward and allows for powerful querying. Below are some syntax examples.

My “Best Of” list

I performed three queries and the results are shown below. To the right of the public patent search services are some proprietary comparisons.

Three services really caught my eye in terms of the interface and the results, effectively making my best of list. They are:

  • FreePatentsOnline
  • PatentLens
  • PatSnap

Conclusion

As noted in the above graphs, free search services are very good, but I believe can get even better. I’m going to make a prediction–this area of patent law will experience significant growth and change in information mining. Gone will be the days of paid-for database services. The Google model will become the norm. In sum, the more advanced our society becomes, the more information we will get. Our task is to optimize the tools for gathering such data because there is a demand out there that frankly demands it.

Posted by Trent at 1:08 pm

The Current Landscape of Patent Search

Patent Mining, Patents No Responses »
Mar 012011

If you’re like me, you might be a little bit confused by the patent searching services out there. Not only are there are a lot of company names to be confused by, all these companies seem to use different indexes with confusing acronyms (DWPI, INPADOC, PFS, PRS, etc). Furthermore, it is often difficult to tell which company has merged, been acquired, or resulted in new or discontinued services. I’ve attempted to make sense of the current patent mining landscape by researching the well-known indexes and databases and, because of my good-naturedness, I’ve decided to share that knowledge with you. I have limited my discussion to those services that include patent search functionality, intentionally leaving out services with only patent-ordering or patent-analytics features. For purposes of clarity, I have organized the list alphabetically. Let me know if there are any others you’d like to add to the list.

Patent Searching Services

Aureka - Acquired by Thomson, this service seems to struggle. The website had dead links and, since owned by Thomson, will most likely vanish into the Innovation horizon.

Boliven – Search tool that boasts over 60 million patents and patent applications. With free subscription options, this service integrates the following sources: Patent – USPTO, EPO, PCT, JPO, KIPO, INPADOC; Clinical trials – NIH/NLM/FDA; company reports – SEC; drugs – FDA; grants – NIH, NSF, SBIR, STTR; legal proceedings – PACER; medical devices – FDA; and over 5,500 publications. Boliven limits you to 30 results if you are not a paid subscriber. If you have a very specific query, this should be no problem though. If you would like a free 30-day trial, you can go to this site: www.boliven.com/freetrials. You will be prompted to enter some information. Once you submit that, you need to enter a promo code. The promo code you can enter for 30 days of Boliven bliss is TrentOstler3. Try it out.

Decopa (or IPCentury, the parent company behind DECOPA) “IP Analysis”- a neural-net-based artificial intelligence tool/knowledge base that uses latent semantic analysis to search for relevant patent documents. Submitting a query in DECOPA returns a list of related patent numbers ranked by relevancy. Instead of browsing the document content in-system, users are provided with links to view the search results on one of several other major patent search sites: esp@cenet, the USPTO website, or Delphion.

DialogPro (Predictable Research Online) – Created specifically for the small business user. It offers a flat subscription-based pricing structure and unlimited access. Searchers accustomed to more flexible or comprehensive options may be disappointed. US, EP, WO/PCT coverage.

Dialog1 – The simplest of the Dialog suite of products, Dialog1 is a web browser-based search tool that uses a simple “question and answer” format aimed at users who want to find relevant information quickly.

DialogClassic Web – Web browser access to the full power of classic command-mode Dialog.

DialogSelect - Aimed at less experienced end-users rather than professional patent searchers or information professionals.

Dialog Web – A web browser-based search interface that combines two separate and distinctly different modes of searching. The first mode provides the full content and functionality of command-mode Dialog classic, while the second mode is a guided search designed for novice searchers.

Delphion- Full-text search for US, European Patent Office and World Intellectual Property Organization patents. A decent tool for quick or occasional patent searchers; not ideal for full time patent searchers. Databases include US, PCT, EP, Japan and Germany. Eventually Thomson will likely fade this service into Innovation.

EAST (Examiner Automated Search Tool) – The free service is very powerful, especially for searching US data. Lightning-fast image searching is ideal for searchers in the mechanical arts. Full document text may be searched on U.S. patents issued since 1971 and OCR text from 1920 to 1970. U. S. patent images from 1790 to the present may be retrieved for viewing or printing. Some foreign patent documents may be searched using EAST as well as access to DWPI. The only catch is that this service is only accessible in Arlington Va, the USPTO Public Search Facility in Alexandria, VA.

Ei Patents – Contains 9.9 million US patents and 3.5 million patents filed with the EPO. Designed to accommodate novice and expert users alike, with multiple search forms ranging from a simple Google-style search bar, to a complex command line search. Bought by Elsevier.

Esp@cenet – Free source of patent bibliographic data, images, families, and legal status data. The service allows you to search across 80+ countries title and abstracts. It also provides full-text searching for the EP database. Uses the DOCDB bibliographic and legal status data file covering the EP and WO/PCT.

FreePatentsOnline - Free service, useful entry level tool for searching major patent collections. It compares well with other free patent search systems in terms of managing queries, alerts, and saving records. The available data collection that includes US (patents and applications), EP, JP, and WO/PCT data. PDF files are available for all collections except Japan.

GenomeQuest IP – Normalizes, curates, and updates IP information across global databases, including USPTO, EPO, WIPO & PCT, INPADOC, GenBank, EMBL, DDBJ, SIPO, and paper filings from WIPO. Over 265,000 patents — including their sequences and all annotations — are now stored and updated bi-weekly in the GQ-PAT database. Users can also add in-house sequence data to GQ-IP.

Google Patent Search – The relevant results (Google-power) and the very fast search and image load times set this tool apart and make it a must use as a first step. Searches over 7 million published applications and patents, but not very extensive, covering only the US.

illumin8 – Contains 23 million patents from 5 worldwide patent offices as well as millions of scientific articles. Affiliated with Elsevier.

infoapps – Ready-to-use projects at a fixed price. Approximately 67 million patent documents available.

Innography – Over 70 million global patent documents updated weekly. Databases include US Grants, US Applications, EU Grants, EU Applications, World Patent Office Applications, Japan Applications, and INPADOC bibliographic data from 40 jurisdictions and 70 countries. Also, includes patent analysis software, notable for the integration of business and legal data into its patent database, including Dun & Bradstreet financial information, and the PACER database of US litigation.

IPQuester – Bibliographic data (back-files plus updates) of patent, trademark, utility model and design as it is published by official sources from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Greece, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Uruguay, United States and Venezuela. Full-text Brazilian patents and utility models (back-files plus updates), including bibliographic, claims and drawings. Couldn’t get this to work properly.

JPDS (Japan Patent Data Service) – provides web-based English language search engine “JP-NETe” for Japanese unexamined patents after 1989 including legal status information, and Japanese search engine “JP-NET” for Japanese patents, utility models, designs and trademarks including legal status information, together with US patent data after 1985. Flat rate for 5,000 Japanese yen per month without any additional charge.

JP-NETe – Auxiliary tool for users looking for a source of Japanese data, especially complete patent drawing sets and legal status. $750/yr.

KIPRIS – internet-based patent document search service which is available to the public free of charge. It covers publications of Korean IPR applications, legal status information and trial information, etc. Korea Institute of Patent Information has been providing KIPRIS since 1996 on behalf of KIPO.

MicroPatent PatentWeb – Uses two databases: MPI-INPADOC Plus (a bibliographic database), and PatSearch FullText. Scope of search includes US, EP, WO/PCT, DE, FR, GB coverage. Although the system is still a strong tool for searching in important full text collections, both its user interface and data coverage now lag behind other commercial search engines. Thomson will most likely fade this product into the Innovation horizon also.

Minesoft – database coves over 28 million patent families, 75+ patent-issuing authorities, English abstracts, bibliographic details, also integrated legal status, full text display, PDF patent document ordering using PatBase (joint product with RWS Group), PatBase Express, PatentOrder, PatentArchive, PatentViewer, Patent Tracker, and/or Patent Family Portal. Updated each week.

Pantros IP – Utilizes Latent Semantic Analysis for analytics, semantic, guided and advanced search technology, and portfolio quality analysis. Natural language and artificial intelligence serve as the core foundation in our IP solutions greatly improving research, analytics, and evaluation precision, speed and results.

PatBase – provides functionality that is easy for beginners to learn, and coverage is large for a system with such a simple interface: full text records for the US, PCT/WO including original non-Latin language documents, EP, GB, DE, FR, JP, KR, IN, TW and CN, as well as title, abstract and claims for Canadian (CA) documents. The tool purposely lacks functionality needed by advanced and commercial searchers.

PatBase Express – Quick and easy to use interface for beginners; access to the majority of the commercial PatBase data; faceted “Optimise search” sidebar can allow quick refining of results. Coverage: US, EP, WO/PCT, JP, CN, DE, FR, GB, KR, IN, TW.

Patent Cafe Prosearch – Has since been purchased by Pantros IP and entirely integrated into the Pantros IP suite of products.

Patent Lens – Well rounded, free, data coverage, including US patents and applications, EP patents, PCT applications, and Australian patents and applications. Good secondary tool for accessing Australian full text data or doing quick and uncomplicated searches. Lacks in-depth search options or record handling to do extensive searches.

Patent Integration – Provides patent search, analysis, visualization, and collaboration composed of a worldwide patent database and special multi-platform client software. Includes over 20 million patent gazettes from Japan, America, Europe, China and Taiwan. Download the application and register to get a userid and password to explore the application.

PriorSmart – Free, low-frills, all-in-one international search portal. “meta search engine.” Also includes fee-based patent-monitoring service.

Patents.com – Free search of US and EP patent collections. Over 12 million patents available.

PatentSurf.net – Free “discovery engine” that doesn’t focus on keywords.

PatSnap.com –PatSnap includes good search interface and analytics tools. Free coverage includes US (applications, utility patents and design patents), EP (applications and patents), WO/PCT. Other available databases include KR, JP, NO, and CN. As of today, the service touts 31,841,190 patents.

QPat – A spin-off of Questel-Orbit’s command environment QWeb, QPAT is a web-based search tool that accesses Questel’s full text patent files, as well as its unique FamPat family and bibliographic database. The tool is one of the only systems to offer the unique FamPat file, with its exclusive definition of patent families. Although the actual data coverage should be similar to INPADOC, this family database is divided into much smaller family units.

Qweb – Web-based command line interface based on the Questel-Orbit database system. Powerful system designed for powerful users comfortable with the connect hour fee structure. The usual patent coverage is presently: US, EP, WO/PCT, as well as other major national collections DE, GB, FR, JP, and other national collections AT, IN, FI, ES, RU, BR, CA, DK, SE, SU, CN, CH, TW and BE.

Raytec PAT-LIST-CN/WEB – JP patents, utility model, design, foreign patents using the INPADOC, DWPI, and CLAIMS databases.

Search4IP – Free. Database consists of over 70 million patent documents from over 70 countries. The patent data is updated once a week.

STN® – CAS – USA – Allows users to use all three databases CAplus, DWPI, and INPADOCDB simultaneously. Operated jointly by CAS (Chemical Abstracts Service) and FIZ Karlsruhe worldwide and is represented in Japan by JAICI.

STN International – FIZ-Karlsruhe – Europe – online database service that provides global access to published research, journal literature, patents, structures, sequences, properties, and other data.

SumoBrain – Free service, useful entry level tool for searching major patent collections. It compares well with other free patent search systems in terms of managing queries and saving records. The weighting operators are worth checking out as a different way to hone searches. Coverage includes US, PCT, EP, and JP.

SureChem – Highly effective chemical structure searching tool with valuable chemical indexing. Is not a substitute for more complex tools such as STN which can do more detailed chemical searching. Covers US, EP, WO/PCT, and JP databases.

Surf-IP - Free service, sponsored by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore covering a wide range of patent databases including a significant portion of Asian databases. A good tool for searching US documents, as well as Asian collections. Databases cover US (applications and patents), WO/PCT, SG, EPO, UK, CN, CA, KR, TH, and TW. However, the features are not robust enough to replace a good commercial search tool.

TotalPatent – This system offers impressive foreign coverage and a friendly user interface; however, some impediments to workflow efficiency remain. The semantic search option is a unique offering. Coverage: at least US, EP, WO/PCT, AT, AU, BE, BR, CA, CH, CN, DD, DE, DK, EA, ES, FI, FR, GB, IE, IN, IT, LU, MC, NL, PT, RU, SE, SU. May also include small or developing collections for BG, CU, CZ, EE, GR, HR, LV, MX, NO, NZ, RO, SK, UA, ZA. Full text original language collections for JP are available for display only.

Thomson Innovation – Thomson’s “best of” service. A worthy all-in-one patent and literature search tool. Frequent product updates in the period after launch have resolved some initial bugs in system stability. Coverage: US, EP, WO/PCT, JP, DE, GB, FR, KR.

Treparel PatentPilot – Online patent information and monitoring service with integrated search engine, automatic patent document delivery service, and sophisticated tool for filing and distributing patent documents.

USPTO PatFT - Full text patents since 1976. Pretty basic search engine once you get the hang of the searching syntax.

USPTO AppFT – Full text applications published, since March 2001.
Westlaw – Basic patent search.

WIPO PATENTSCOPE - Free search service offered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It is made up of two databases, each with its own search interface: the International Applications search, and the National Collections search. As of November 2010, PATENTSCOPE’s searchable national patent collections include the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO), Argentina (AR), Brazil (BR), Cuba (CU), Israel (IL), Mexico (MX), Morocco (MC), Republic of Korea (KR), Singapore (SG), South Africa (ZA), Spain (ES) and Vietnam (VN). The International Applications search service offers full text searching of its collection of Patent Cooperation treaty (WO/PCT) applications, and supports searching in both Latin and non-Latin text languages. The service currently supports full-text data search in the following languages: English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Spanish.

World Intellectual Property Search (WIPS) Global - Korean Patent Index (KPI) coverage is current and updated weekly, but with the exception of Korea, the system’s coverage is lacking compared to other search engines. The user interface lags behind other commercial search engines.

Xyggy Patent – Pretty cool item-based search engine. Didn’t work on Firefox, but IE, Opera, and Chrome all worked. The database does not seem to be as comprehensive, but it was unclear which index this site uses.

Foreign Country Websites

In addition, here are some individual foreign countries’ sites. I have not provided a list to each link, but they are out there. Here is a link: http://www.patentsonline.com.au/patent/pwhere.html.

Canadian Patent Databases – (1924 – present, free searching and display) The CIPO Canadian Patent Database contains all Canadian patents (both applications and granted patents) since 1924. For patent documents which are either laid-open applications (an application that has been made available for public viewing but has not yet been granted) or are patents granted since August 15, 1978, the database contains bibliographic data, textual data (titles, abstracts and claims) and image data. For patents granted prior to August 15, 1978, the database contains bibliographic data, the text of titles only (no text of abstracts and claims) and image data.

Chinese patent database (1985 – present, in Chinese, free searching and abstract display) The Chinese patent database is provided by SIPO — State Intellectual Property Office of the People’s Republic of China. The database contains abstracts of all the Chinese patents, including patent applications and granted patents since 1985 and the images since 1996. There are 11 fields can be searched in: IPC (International Patent Classification), Title, Application number, Application date, Patent number, Inventor, Abstract, etc. The IPC in Chinese is available from this site.

Italian patent database (recent 1 year only, free searching and brief display) – The Italian patent database is provided by FILDATA , an Italian patent information company offers documentation services at the Italian Patent and Trademark office. The database contains recent one year of Italian patent applications. Searching by Italian patent applications or title keywords in Italian. The search results only the title, application number, application date and applicant will be displayed.

Japanese Patent Office (JPO) Japan, PAJ – Patent Abstracts of Japan (1993 – present, free searching and display) The PAJ – Patent Abstracts of Japan which is part of Industrial Property Digital Library. The PAJ is a searchable database of Japanese patent applications abstracts and legal status, published by the JPO. The date range covers from 1993.1.1 (publication date) and it takes about 3 months from the publication of the applications to the database. The database can be searched by Keywords, Applicant, Title of invention, Date of publication of application, IPC (International Patent Classification), Application number, Publication number, Patent number, and so on. Available data include front page and drawings of the patents.

The PAJ database of PATON contains the textual information from the CD-ROM-Series “Patent Abstracts of Japan (PAJ)”, which is published monthly by the JPO. It contains bibliographic data and the English translation of the edited version of Japanese patent applications without foreign priority.

New Zealand patents (free searching & title display) – The New Zealand patents database is provided by the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ), a business unit in the Ministry of Commerce. Information contained in the database accessible through this site has been taken from files held at the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand. The official trade marks, patents and designs registers are available from IPONZ..

Summary
The area of patent mining is quickly evolving, much like other areas in the information age. It looks like the future for these services looks good as innovation continues to create better products with better analytical tools.
Special thanks to http://www.intellogist.com/wiki/Main_Page, http://piug.org/vendors.php, and http://www.mit.gov.in/content/patents-database-country.

 

Posted by Trent at 8:30 am
© 2013 A Budding Patent Lawyer's Perspective Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha