Search Quirk of the Day

Every once in a while I am doing a project and come across the need to perform what I assume will be a simple task in my patent search software, and then find out that it just can’t be done.

I wanted to start highlighting and cataloging these little quirks, and I don’t mean to pick on any particular system. There have got to be dozens of instances of this kind of thing in most products, as designers can’t anticipate every possible way searchers will want to use these systems – but when a big workflow impediment comes up, it benefits us to document that and let our vendors know.