Yes, You Can Search Patents using Numeric Property Ranges!

As a reference librarian I frequently get questions about patent search tools and their capabilities.  A request I hear often is “how can I search patent data using a numeric property range?”

If you’re a chemist you have a nice option in Reaxys, or Reaxysfile on STN, but this file is strictly chemistry – it does not cover engineering and mechanical topics.  And you may have heard of Knovel, a non-patent search product that allows property range searching in textbooks.

But where can one find a patent collection with searchable property ranges?  This kind of search is possible in the full text PCT, Australian and Canadian collections on STN.  Read more to find out about the PCTFULL, CAFULL and AUFULL files that have been produced by STN distributor FIZ Karlsruhe.

6 Recent STN Updates, and a New STN Platform!

Every few months, the Intellogist blog checks up on the newest features and coverage available on the STN search platform.  The STN platform allows professional patent searchers to hunt for a wide range of relevant prior art by searching through valuable patent and non-patent literature (NPL) databases using a flexible command-line interface. Back in October of 2012, we described the expanded numeric property search feature available on 14 patent and NPL databases on STN. Throughout the remainder of 2012, STN had a number of additional coverage and feature updates, ranging from the addition of a Japanese patent full-text database to the implementation of the new Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) within the portal. STN also recently announced the beta release of the first version of a new STN platform, which combines command-line searching and an intuitive user interface.

After the jump, learn about six of the most recent major updates to the coverage and features on the STN platform, and read about the release of the new version of STN!

Search Platforms of CAS: SciFinder vs STN

A popular topic on the CHIMF-L listserv during the past week has been  SciFinder and CAS databases.  Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) is a division of the American Chemical Society, and the organization produces a variety of chemistry-themed databases, including CAplus, CAS REGISTRY, and MARPAT.  SciFinder is one platform through which to access the CAS databases, but STN (operated jointly by CAS and FIZ-Karlsruhe) offers an alternative platform for CAS database searching.

So which platform offers a higher quality search experience?  Continue reading as I  compare the platforms in three areas: database coverage, ease of use, and Markush searches.

Free Online Courses for Database Searching

You don’t need to go back to grad school to learn how to search in patent and non-patent literature (NPL) databases.  In fact, many database vendors and producers are happy to teach you how to use their products for free.  Most database vendor websites offer a wide range of free educational resources, including user manuals for for database platforms, specific database information sheets, and even live or recorded online courses (sometimes called webinars or e-seminars).  I’ve watched a lot of these webinars, and I’ll highlight a few of my favorite webinar providers in this post.

Read on to learn about the free live and recorded webinars provided by IET, Dialog, and STN!

Items of interest: STN, Innography, and Fairview’s Alexandria

There are three interesting topics I am pursuing this week.  There’s so much to write about I can’t keep up! I wanted to do a quick round-up to keep you all informed of the big happenings with STN, Innography, and Alexandria (a new product from Fairview Research).

Warning: your electronic patent search databases have gaps!

UPDATE: For a further enlightening discussion of the gaps in the USPTO full text database, please see the comment section of this post (click the word “Comments” where it appears at the very end of this post).

Recently, a message came over Carl Oppedahl’s PAIR discussion list highlighting a mysterious gap in the USPTO’s online patent database: data seemed to be missing for patent numbers between 6,363,527 and 6,412,112.

Rick Neifeld, of Neifeld IP Law, responded that his 1999 survey into the PTO’s data revealed many errors in the USPTO’s data, as many of us have probably suspected for some time.  Rick’s description of these errors is very interesting:

The dirt consisted of things as minor as numerous misspellings of assignee names, or HTML pages non compliant with HTML standards, to HTML text that could not be deconstructed into component sections due to HTML formatting errors, assignment records that were combined, corrupt, unreadable.

I absolutely expect our current crop of electronic patent database to contain massive numbers of errors. We have to expect this, if only because of the sheer amount of information involved.   Another reason might be that the economic model of patent data production does not really encourage the national patent offices to maintain high quality electronic patent data. There are millions and millions of patent documents pouring out of government-run institutions (without a profit motive for perfection), and errors are bound to be rampant.

Spotlight on GenomeQuest

Recently I was able to attend a demo of the GenomeQuest sequence searching tool, which is designed to support sequence searching for prior art investigations.   GenomeQuest provides access to proprietary patent database collections which have been indexed especially for sequence searching, as well as to public access databases of genetic and protein sequences.

One of GenomeQuest’s most notable databases, GQ-PAT, contains a proprietary collection of nucleotide and protein sequences extracted from patent collections, including the US, EPO, WO/PCT, and the DNA Databank of Japan (where the JPO deposits patents that contain sequences).  Because some WO/PCT documents are only available as images and not as electronic text, GenomeQuest employs an in-house Optical Character Recognition (OCR) process that can involve human editing with the assistance of a related machine-readable documents, such as a US family member.  The patents in GQ-PAT are also supplemented by corresponding INPADOC records to ensure that their legal status and assignee information stays up-to-date with this source.