- Email: [email protected]
News on patent, trademark and design databases on the Internet
World Patent Information xxx (2013) 1e2
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
World Patent Information journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/worpatin
News on patent, trademark and design databases on the Internet EspacenetÒ has announced that its Patent Translate functionality now allows automated translation of patent documents from Japanese into English and vice-versa. The European Patent Office Patent Register now provides direct links to PCT A1 publications in status pages. The “Event History” view now makes it possible to sort results by date either forwards or backwards. India has created a new web page making “statements of working” available online, at http://ipindiaservices.gov.in/ workingofpatents/. They can be searched for by publication number, application number or applicant name. These are required by Indian law and must disclose whether a patent is being worked, and if so whether this is by the applicant or a licensee and whether the relevant product is being manufactured in India or overseas. They have also introduced a page at http://ipindiaservices.gov.in/ ferstatus/ which allows the display of First Examination Reports. This does not have a search option but can be filtered by regional patent office, broad subject area, and date of release. Another page at http://ipindiaservices.gov.in/publicfieldofinvention/ allows pending, granted, refused, abandoned and withdrawn applications to be browsed by broad subject area and sorted by application number, title, filing date, applicant name, applicant address, or publication date. South Korea has produced a new version of its KIPRIS search database. The most noticeable feature initially is that the site now uses dynamic functionality so that the simple search box, advanced search boxes, result list, and filters are all constantly on the same web page, expanding and contracting according to the user’s selected options. Notably for a free database, it allows patents to be searched according to their current status, with a wide range of options available. It is possible to search specifically within the title, abstract or claims of the patent as well as the full text. The results page can be toggled to include text metadata, thumbnail images, or both, and the list of results can be sorted by an extremely wide range of fields. Full specifications are available in Korean, but automated translation requires payment. The design and trade mark searches use the same interface as the patent search and offer equally comprehensive search and filter options. Korean Patent Abstracts, the English-language abstracts database, is still offered as an additional set of search options to the patent search, although with fewer search options. Another novel feature is the “search guide” option, which offers a “search wizard” for general searching or a “my own patent” option to help people find information on their own IP registrations. Both of these attempt to offer beginners the most immediately useful options for searches in a manner similar to a Windows wizard. OHIM has introduced a new Taxonomy tool to help searchers use the Nice Classification. It is available on the TMClass database 0172-2190/$ e see front matter http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wpi.2013.09.002
at http://tmclass.tmdn.org, by clicking on an unobtrusive “browse terms” link. It has been developed by OHIM as a hierarchical directory tree view of Nice classes. The tree appears in the left-hand frame on the screen, and each section can be expanded individually. Clicking on a concept in the tree brings up a list of individual goods and services associated with it. The top level of the tree simply gives class numbers, but hovering over one displays a list of the broad concepts covered by the class. The international European trade mark database TMView, at www.tmview.europa.eu, now offers access to trade marks from Cyprus and Croatia, leaving Greece as the only EU member not included. It has also been announced that, via a Declaration of Intent between OHIM and WIPO, TMView is to expand beyond European Union countries. Norwegian and Mexican trade marks have already been added, and Turkey and Morocco are promised later this summer. A geographical search site for UK patent applications is now available at http://www.patentsonamap.co.uk/. The site uses data from the IPO’s IPSUM status system, and as a result covers all applications since 2008. It is possible to search by viewing and zooming on a map, or by direct links to broad regions. The system can be set to display all patents, or patents within a top-level IPC code. Clicking on a map pin brings up brief details of the application and a link to the full record on IPSUM. A “details” link to the bottom right of the map offers a more advanced display page that includes a list of all the patents on the map. This list can be sorted by applicant name, IPC code or postcode or filtered by any of the same fields. One limitation is that it is based on correspondence addresses on patent applications, which may relate to organisations’ head offices rather than the locations of actual research or production facilities. A new site, Patent Savant, at https://www.patentsavant.com/, offers access to USA patent re-examination status data without the intrusive CAPTCHAs found on the official PAIR database. Free use allows only the patent number and application number searches available on PAIR. A wider range of search functionality is available to paid subscribers. The USPTO has launched an international patent database in addition to its national databases, known as the Global Patent Search Network, at http://gpsn.uspto.gov. At present the data included consists of Chinese patent and utility model information from 2008 to 2011. Only a simple search box is currently available allowing searching of the translated document text. The result list can then be filtered by kind codes, publication years, inventors, or IPC codes, but only those most represented in the list are available. Initially clicking on a patent in the result list expands a list of “highlights” showing sentences mentioning the search term in the patent text. Clicking on the “View patent” button leads to the original and an automated translation of the abstract, first claim,
2
News on patent, trademark and design databases on the Internet / World Patent Information xxx (2013) 1e2
and opening paragraph of the description. The USPTO have also made significant improvements to the ease of obtaining original documents from their national database site. The page-by-page display of original documents now uses PDF format instead of the previous TIFF format (although the PDF files are still scanned page images without searchable or copyable text), and it is possible to go directly to the page-by-page display by inputting a patent number at http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/patimg.htm for granted documents or http://appft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/ appimg.htm for applications. WIPO’s PatentScope database at http://patentscope.wipo.int has now added bibliographic data from Bahrain, Egypt and the
United Arab Emirates to its National Collections of patent material. Titles, abstracts, and applicant and inventor name are available in both Arabic and English or Roman alphabet transliteration. Bahrain and UAE material goes back to the start of the current patent system, and Egyptian to 2004. Philip Eagle The British Library, Business and IP Collections, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK E-mail address: [email protected].
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
World Patent Information journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/worpatin
News on patent, trademark and design databases on the Internet EspacenetÒ has announced that its Patent Translate functionality now allows automated translation of patent documents from Japanese into English and vice-versa. The European Patent Office Patent Register now provides direct links to PCT A1 publications in status pages. The “Event History” view now makes it possible to sort results by date either forwards or backwards. India has created a new web page making “statements of working” available online, at http://ipindiaservices.gov.in/ workingofpatents/. They can be searched for by publication number, application number or applicant name. These are required by Indian law and must disclose whether a patent is being worked, and if so whether this is by the applicant or a licensee and whether the relevant product is being manufactured in India or overseas. They have also introduced a page at http://ipindiaservices.gov.in/ ferstatus/ which allows the display of First Examination Reports. This does not have a search option but can be filtered by regional patent office, broad subject area, and date of release. Another page at http://ipindiaservices.gov.in/publicfieldofinvention/ allows pending, granted, refused, abandoned and withdrawn applications to be browsed by broad subject area and sorted by application number, title, filing date, applicant name, applicant address, or publication date. South Korea has produced a new version of its KIPRIS search database. The most noticeable feature initially is that the site now uses dynamic functionality so that the simple search box, advanced search boxes, result list, and filters are all constantly on the same web page, expanding and contracting according to the user’s selected options. Notably for a free database, it allows patents to be searched according to their current status, with a wide range of options available. It is possible to search specifically within the title, abstract or claims of the patent as well as the full text. The results page can be toggled to include text metadata, thumbnail images, or both, and the list of results can be sorted by an extremely wide range of fields. Full specifications are available in Korean, but automated translation requires payment. The design and trade mark searches use the same interface as the patent search and offer equally comprehensive search and filter options. Korean Patent Abstracts, the English-language abstracts database, is still offered as an additional set of search options to the patent search, although with fewer search options. Another novel feature is the “search guide” option, which offers a “search wizard” for general searching or a “my own patent” option to help people find information on their own IP registrations. Both of these attempt to offer beginners the most immediately useful options for searches in a manner similar to a Windows wizard. OHIM has introduced a new Taxonomy tool to help searchers use the Nice Classification. It is available on the TMClass database 0172-2190/$ e see front matter http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wpi.2013.09.002
at http://tmclass.tmdn.org, by clicking on an unobtrusive “browse terms” link. It has been developed by OHIM as a hierarchical directory tree view of Nice classes. The tree appears in the left-hand frame on the screen, and each section can be expanded individually. Clicking on a concept in the tree brings up a list of individual goods and services associated with it. The top level of the tree simply gives class numbers, but hovering over one displays a list of the broad concepts covered by the class. The international European trade mark database TMView, at www.tmview.europa.eu, now offers access to trade marks from Cyprus and Croatia, leaving Greece as the only EU member not included. It has also been announced that, via a Declaration of Intent between OHIM and WIPO, TMView is to expand beyond European Union countries. Norwegian and Mexican trade marks have already been added, and Turkey and Morocco are promised later this summer. A geographical search site for UK patent applications is now available at http://www.patentsonamap.co.uk/. The site uses data from the IPO’s IPSUM status system, and as a result covers all applications since 2008. It is possible to search by viewing and zooming on a map, or by direct links to broad regions. The system can be set to display all patents, or patents within a top-level IPC code. Clicking on a map pin brings up brief details of the application and a link to the full record on IPSUM. A “details” link to the bottom right of the map offers a more advanced display page that includes a list of all the patents on the map. This list can be sorted by applicant name, IPC code or postcode or filtered by any of the same fields. One limitation is that it is based on correspondence addresses on patent applications, which may relate to organisations’ head offices rather than the locations of actual research or production facilities. A new site, Patent Savant, at https://www.patentsavant.com/, offers access to USA patent re-examination status data without the intrusive CAPTCHAs found on the official PAIR database. Free use allows only the patent number and application number searches available on PAIR. A wider range of search functionality is available to paid subscribers. The USPTO has launched an international patent database in addition to its national databases, known as the Global Patent Search Network, at http://gpsn.uspto.gov. At present the data included consists of Chinese patent and utility model information from 2008 to 2011. Only a simple search box is currently available allowing searching of the translated document text. The result list can then be filtered by kind codes, publication years, inventors, or IPC codes, but only those most represented in the list are available. Initially clicking on a patent in the result list expands a list of “highlights” showing sentences mentioning the search term in the patent text. Clicking on the “View patent” button leads to the original and an automated translation of the abstract, first claim,
2
News on patent, trademark and design databases on the Internet / World Patent Information xxx (2013) 1e2
and opening paragraph of the description. The USPTO have also made significant improvements to the ease of obtaining original documents from their national database site. The page-by-page display of original documents now uses PDF format instead of the previous TIFF format (although the PDF files are still scanned page images without searchable or copyable text), and it is possible to go directly to the page-by-page display by inputting a patent number at http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/patimg.htm for granted documents or http://appft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/ appimg.htm for applications. WIPO’s PatentScope database at http://patentscope.wipo.int has now added bibliographic data from Bahrain, Egypt and the
United Arab Emirates to its National Collections of patent material. Titles, abstracts, and applicant and inventor name are available in both Arabic and English or Roman alphabet transliteration. Bahrain and UAE material goes back to the start of the current patent system, and Egyptian to 2004. Philip Eagle The British Library, Business and IP Collections, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK E-mail address: [email protected].