Searching patents

Accuris's patent collections contain semantically indexed and presummarized documents from major worldwide patent repositories, including USPTO, EPO, WIPO, and JPO.

To search and analyze patents

  1. On the home page, click PATENT INTELLIGENCE.
  2. Under I want to, click Search patents.

You can also search patent collections on the Research page. However, searching patent collections on the Patents Intelligence page retrieves patent bibliographic information that can be used to sort results and analyze trends.

What is shown on the Search Patents page

The Search Patents page includes the following fields, options, and commands:

  • Query box, where you enter your patent query. While you are typing your query, Engineering Workbench provides a list of suggestions and possible corrections as you type. You can further focus your search by specifying a text field. Click to see a list of available text fields, and then click the name of a text field to select it. For more information about filtering by text fields, see Fielded search.
  • Add Filter. You can further focus your search by specifying one or more patent field filters. If you are entering criteria for one or more patent fields, click Add Filter, click ClosedAll available text fields, and then select a patent field from the list. For more information about filtering by patent fields, see Fielded search. To remove a filter, click .

  • Synonyms and Ontology command. Enables you to see and select query synonyms, more general query terms, and more specific query terms for your query.
  • Find command. Begins the search after you enter your query and select the target patent collections.
  • Query Language, where you select a language for your query.
  • Use advanced mode. Click this link to enter a complex keyword query manually, and then enter your query in the Filters box. As you type, you can click to select additional filters (assignees, dates, patent classes, cities, states, countries), and you can type < (angle bracket) to select an operator (<in>, <and>, <or>, <not>).
  • Clear Query, Save Query, and Load Query commands enable you to clear the current query, save the current query, or load a previously saved query.
  • Manage Assignee Groups link. Enables you to modify your assignee groups.

Translating patent search results

Search result citations can be translated into English, French, German, Japanese, and Chinese from the original citations.

To translate the display of search results

  1. Click Translation.
  2. On the Translate results to list, click the language that you want to translate your results to.
  3. Next to From, select the check boxes next to the languages that you want to translate from.

Available patent collections

The following patent collections are available to be searched:

  • Chinese Granted Patents: 1985–current
  • Chinese Granted Patents for Utility Models: 1993–2010
  • Chinese Patent Applications: 1985–current
  • Chinese Utility Model Applications: 1985–1992, 2010–current
  • European Granted Patents (EPO): 1981–current
  • European Patent Applications (EPO): 1988–current
  • French Granted Patents: 1985–current
  • French Patent Applications: 1976–current
  • Germany Gebrauchsmusters (Utility Model): 1980–current
  • German Granted Patents: 1980–current
  • German Patent Applications: 1970–current
  • Great Britain Granted Patents: 1970–current
  • Great Britain Patent Applications: 1979–current
  • Japanese Granted Patents: 1994–current
  • Japanese Patent Abstracts (JPO): 1976–current
  • Japanese Patent Applications: 1993–current
  • U.S. Granted Patents (USPTO): 1971–current
  • U.S. Patent Applications (USPTO): 2001–current
  • WIPO PCT Publications (WIPO): 1978–current

Specifying search criteria

ClosedTo enter a new query

  1. In the Query text box, type a natural language query as a sentence, a question, or a phrase (up to 4096 characters).
  1. Use the Language bar to specify the language of your query and the languages of the search result citations that you want translated.
    1. From the Query Language list, select the language of your query.
    2. Click the Translation: into link to select the languages of the search result citations that you want translated.
  1. Under Search In, choose the patent collections that you want to target during your search:
    • To include particular patent collections, select the check box at the left of each patent collection name. The check box in the Patent Collections header appears shaded if you do not select all the patent collections within that category.
    • To include all patent collections, select the Patents & Patent Applications check box.
  1. (Optional) To save your query, click Save Query.
  2. Click Find to start the search.

Click Clear Query to clear your query at any time.

ClosedTo save a query

The content of Accuris's patent collections is updated weekly. Patent queries can be saved after creation, and then can be scheduled to run automatically.

Only the query is saved, not the corresponding search results. To view the search results of a saved query, run the query again.

To save a query

  1. On the toolbar, click Save Query.
  1. In the Save Query / Set Alert dialog box, type the name of the query. Use alphanumeric characters only.
  1. (Optional) In the  Description box, type a description of your query. This description is included in email notifications about new results that are found by the query.
  2. (Optional) To send email notifications about new results from saved queries, next to Send alert to type one or more email addresses, separated by semicolons.
  3. Click Save.

Email notifications about new results from scheduled queries

For each scheduled query, Engineering Workbench can send you an automated email message whenever new results are found. You can specify that the email message be sent to multiple email addresses. Engineering Workbench will send a separate email message for each scheduled query that has found new results.

The email message also includes up to five new results from patents collections. In the message, the results are presented as answers & citations.