Is it Finally Here? ProQuest Dialog Shows Off at PIUG 2013

The annual Patent Information Users Group (PIUG) 2013 conference took place in late April in Alexandria, VA, and I hope you were following @Intellogist for all the up-to-the-minute details! One of the most fun things about this conference is seeing demonstrations of new product features. I made a point of stopping at the ProQuest Dialog booth to check in on the product, and was excited to find that this long-anticipated system is nearing completion.

ProQuest Dialog is important because it finally provides access to many valuable data files that were previously only accessible via dinosaur legacy Dialog products. It’s also exciting because it retains a transactional billing model, while allowing searchers to see record previews before actually buying access to the record. Read more to find out how this product will support your prior art search needs.

Two Fantastic Updates to Free Patent Search Tools: Espacenet and PATENTSCOPE

Free patent search tools like Espacenet and PATENTSCOPE are an excellent resource for both casual  and professional patent searchers who want to quickly locate data on a specific patent document or scope out more detailed citation, legal status, and family data for both US and non-US patent documents. Recently, both Espacenet (created by the EPO) and PATENTSCOPE (created by WIPO) released some useful new updates: direct links to the Common Citation Document (CCD) viewer are now accessible from INPADOC family lists on Espacenet, and a new collection of US patent documents has been added to PATENTSCOPE. 

After the jump, learn about the new citation viewing features for INPADOC families on Espacenet, and find out the coverage of PATENTSCOPE’s new US collection!

Major Updates to PatBase and PatBase Express

PatBase is a unique patent search platform created by Minesoft and RWS Group which organizes patent publications under broad family-based records, and PatBase Express is a simplified version of PatBase targeted to novice patent searchers. We last took an indepth look at some of the newest features added to both PatBase and PatBase Express back in November 2012, when a Classification Finder, new folder export option, a new Excel export format, a PatBase Express interface in Spanish, and many other improvements were added to both systems.  Minesoft recently announced a number of new interface and coverage updates that have been added to both platforms, including the option to display Claims or Descriptions for a single publication according to your preferred country, more search and display tools on PatBase Express, translated assignee names for non-Latin families, and broader full-text coverage for Russia, Japan, and Taiwan. 

Continue reading for a quick summary of all the coverage updates and interface improvements on both the PatBase and PatBase Express platforms for Spring 2013!

Free Mexican Patent, Trademark, and Design Search Tools: VIDOC and SIGA

Patent search professionals will mainly rely on subscription patent databases to locate worldwide patent prior art, but sometimes full-text versions of documents or specific bibliographic/legal status data can be quickly located for free through the online services available on intellectual property office websites. IP office websites also often offer a wide range of additional search options for other types of intellectual property, such as trademarks, industrial designs, and even copyright records.  In past posts, I’ve reviewed the free patent and IP search resources available on a variety of IP office websites, including the intellectual property offices of France, Singapore, and Sweden.  In today’s post, I’d like to give a brief overview of the patent, trademark, and design search options available through the website of the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI). In particular, the IMPI website offers VIDOC, a search tool for locating the detailed record and related full-text documents for a variety of Mexican intellectual property records, including patent and trademarks.  SIGA is another service accessible on the IMPI website that allows users to create queries through a variety of search forms in order to locate records from the Mexican Industrial Property Gazette.

Read on for a description of the broad search and display options for Mexican patent, trademark, and design records accessible through various online services within the IMPI website, including VIDOC and SIGA.

Search Reports, Patent Documents, and File Histories from Brazil through e-Patentes

Professional patent searchers will often need to search for both patent and non-patent literature (NPL) prior art on a global scale during an exhaustive validity search.  Multilingual search capabilities, access to a wide range of both free and subscription patent and NPL databases, and the knowledge and skill to thoroughly search these systems are all necessary components for a successful global prior art search. Patent search provider Landon IP offers the most thorough global prior art searches available, thanks to a team of highly skilled multilingual patent search professionals who can skillfully utilize a range of patent and non-patent literature search systems from around the world.  The in-depth search system information available through Intellogist provides a glimpse into the global prior art search resources which Landon IP searchers utilize on a daily basis.

For example, today we’ll take a quick look at a free resource listed on Intellogist called e-Patentes, which can be used to locate PDF copies of Brazilian patent documents, as well as the search reports and file history papers related to these Brazilian patent records.

Read on to learn about e-Patentes, one of many global patent search resources described on Intellogist!

USPC-to-CPC Concordance Tool Now Available on the USPTO Website!

On January 1, 2013, the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) completely replaced ECLA, and all US published applications will now carry CPC classifications. The EPO’s Espacenet search system has already added a CPC search tool to its portal, and many subscription-based patent search systems have also integrated the CPC into their US and EP patent records and search options. The official CPC website currently offers an “ECLA to CPC to IPC” concordance table for users who need find a relevant CPC symbol that corresponds to an IPC or ECLA classification symbol.  The USPTO website now offers an additional useful tool to help users locate the correct CPC symbol by searching for a corresponding US Patent Classification (USPC) symbol. With this tool, users can enter any USPC symbol and automatically generate a list of the closest corresponding CPC symbols.

After the jump, Landon IP’s librarian Kristin Whitman provides a brief guide on how to use the “Statistical Mapping from USPC to CPC” concordance tool!

Important Changes to Patent Sequence Search Tools

Major updates have been added on two of the largest search platforms for locating peptide and nucleic acid sequences within patent records, and Intellogist is here to bring you all the details on these recent changes to to the coverage, search, and display features on GenomeQuest and the USGENE BLAST Search Portal. GenomeQuest is a biological sequence data management platform created by GenomeQuest, Inc., and GenomeQuest maintains its own patent sequence database, GQ-PAT. Many other non-patent data files are also simultaneously searchable on the platform, such as GenBank, RefSeq, Swiss-Prot, and other NCBI and EBI files.  We last highlighted the Chinese patent office sequence data added to GenomeQuest in 2010, and today we’ll look at additional India, Brazil, and Chinese patent sequence data now available in an Emerging Countries Domestic Patents Archive.  Additional GenomeQuest updates include normalized patent assignee names and subject database filtering.

The USGENE® BLAST® Search Portal is a subscription-based online search platform created by the SequenceBase Corporation that allows users to search USGENE®, a database that lists peptide and nucleotide sequences from US published applications and issued patents. Previously in July 2012, there were a number of updates added to the portal, and additional updates were implemented in December 2012, including options to expand and download all alignments for search results.

Continue reading to learn about all the new coverage, search, display, and download options recently added on two major sequence search platforms, GenomeQuest and the USGENE BLAST Search Portal!

Free Online Sources of Italian Patent Data

What is the best free online source for Italian patent data?  The most obvious answer would be the Worldwide Database on Espacenet, which contains the bibliographic, title, and abstract information for IT documents from the INPADOC file, as well as some representative image and citation coverage for IT records.  Italian patent data coverage can be rather spotty, especially through the INPADOC file, so users may need to search through alternate sources for specific documents or date ranges for Italian patent data.  Professional patent searchers will have access to subscription patent search systems that may host expanded Italian patent data beyond the basic INPADOC coverage (such as the DWPI coverage accessible through Thomson Innovation).  If you don’t have access to a subscription patent search system, there are also free online search portals which host bibliographic data for Italian patent records.  Users can search directly through the Italian Patent and Trademark Office National Data Search, or you can utilize the FILPAT database, provided by FILDATA srl, which hosts bibliographic data on Italian utility models.

After the jump, learn about the coverage, search, and viewing features for two free online portals that host Italian patent data!

A Multitude of Free IP Search Options from the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office

Most intellectual property authority websites offer some type of online IP search portal, ranging from the basic bibliographic patent search tool on the Syrian Patent Office website to the multiple patent, trademark, design, and caselaw databases available from the French Patent Office. Occasionally I run across an IP office website which impresses me with the thorough coverage and advanced features offered through their online search portal, but I’ve never been more surprised than when I tested the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office IP Search platform. IP Search is the official search platform for the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office (HIPO) and provides a free English-language search interface for all “data of the electronic register of HIPO, as well as [...] data of the international and Community industrial property titles of protection effective on the territory of Hungary.” The portal provides an intuitive central interface where users can search through all imaginable types of Hungarian intellectual property: patents, SPCs, plant patents, utility models, trademarks, geographical indications, designs, topography, and even copyright records. The hit list provides easy filtering options through a flexible grid view, and users can download and display a wide range of data and full-text sections of Hungarian patent documents in the full record view.

After the jump, learn about the numerous search and viewing options available on this broad and sophisticated search portal for Hungarian intellectual property!

Free Family, Citation, and Legal Status Searches for Chinese Patent Documents on PSS of SIPO

In September 2012, I compared the free patent search options available for Chinese patent documents, and one option was the free English patent search interface created by SIPO. SIPO also provides another free patent search tool called the Patent Search and Service System (PSS), which went online for public testing in April 2011 and currently includes both English and Chinese search options.  According to an EPO press release, the PSS includes “a number of advanced search and retrieval possibilities, such as citation and family searches, cross-lingual retrieval, legal status information, full text data and machine translation.”  The tool allows users to access CN data on patents, utility models, and designs from 1985 onwards, and the system is updated monthly. Worldwide patent document data covering 97 countries (most likely INPADOC data) also appears to be searchable under the structured search form. The tool is free, but registration is necessary to access many of the more advanced tools of the system, such as viewing the Search History tab and downloading full PDF documents.  Unfortunately, registration proved to be a bit problematic for an English-language user, and some features were still not accessible even after registering for the portal.

Read on to learn about the advanced search tools accessible for Chinese and worldwide patent documents on PSS, and also learn about the registration and access problems that you may encounter when using this system.