News on patent, trade mark and design databases on the Internet

World Patent Information 23 (2001) 309±310

www.elsevier.com/locate/worpatin

News on patent, trade mark and design databases on the Internet Some patent oces are now putting manuals up on the web on such subjects about how to apply for patents, how examination is carried out, advice on databases and so on and those that I know are listed at our site although by the time you read this it may have moved to our new site as part of a comprehensive overhaul of the British Library's Patents Information service site (Those for trade marks will be listed separately at ). Provided these sites are kept up to date they will provide a great service in cheapening and simplifying access to information. The catch is that some novices will think that they can do everything themselves: I am regularly asked for help with PCT applications entering the national phase by people who refuse to use a patent agent or attorney (my advice: get a patent agent or attorney). Manuals issued by non-English speaking authorities would be welcome as well, but it may be my lack of language skills that is preventing my identifying them and I would welcome hearing of more via [email protected]. The Delphion site at has announced that from 1 June 2001 it is moving to being a registration service. There will be three levels: free, which provides US bibliographic data; premier, which basically o€ers the services which were previously free plus text searching of EP A and B and WO speci®cations; and unlimited, which o€ers much more data including PDF downloads. Prices are $75 per month for premier and $150 for unlimited (these prices are higher for e.g., intermediaries). Searching on Derwent's database is extra on a pay-as-you-go basis. More details are at . I have found this product very useful for quick bibliographic checking, especially for family and status data, and I like the ability to manipulate results so that e.g., company name and IPC appear in the listings and the list can be sorted by applicant or by IPC if this is wanted. It would be good if Esp@cenet allowed this, plus the ability to con®ne the list of hits to a single member of the patent family. Esp@cenet at has in fact changed so that it now allows truncation. You can use * to truncate at the end of a word or ? to substitute for one PII: S 0 1 7 2 - 2 1 9 0 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 3 6 - 9

or no character as in ®b?? for ®ber or ®bre. ? cannot be used as a wildcard in the middle of a word as in colo?r. These changes have been asked for a long time, although in fact truncation has always been available in other ®elds. Thus, in the patent number ®eld you can limit searches by inserting e.g., ``GB or EP or WO'' while in the date ®eld you can simply insert ``2001'' and in the IPC ®eld you can use ``A61K''. There is an anonymous-looking site (in fact hosted by the European Bioinformatics Institute) at which provides data on DNA patents from the major authorities as well as from non-patent sites. Di€erent databases can be selected or all can be selected by clicking on the ``all'' button. As I am not a biologist I cannot decipher most of the data provided, but it could be useful for some when carrying out quick free searches. For those interested in pharmaceuticals the OrangeBookPatents.com site at provides a great deal of free tabulated data, including links to relevant patent speci®cations, on drugs. It is arranged by trademark and is based on the ``Orange Book'' on US drugs. Priced data is also available. I am not aware of similar information for Europe on the web. Also on pharmaceuticals, Britain has a database devoted to recording data about granted patents for which Supplementary Protection Certi®cates or SPCs have been granted. SPCs do not extend the life of the patent itself, but do give further protection for certain speci®c pharmaceutical materials therein, essentially to allow for the loss of time while permission to market them was being sought. Similar provisions apply to plant protection patents, e.g., those for fertilizers and pesticides. The SPC Search database is at and is searched by either the SPC number or else the corresponding British or European patent number. The Community Plant Variety Oce has set up what it emphasizes is an unocial, informal database on plant varieties at which can be searched by species name for pending or granted rights. France is now making the current issue of its fortnightly designs gazette available at .

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News / World Patent Information 23 (2001) 309±310

Germany has launched a new database, DEPATISnet, which o€ers text searching of German speci®cations from 1987. The site is at . By the end of May an English-language interface will be available but at the time of writing I was working with the German interface. It is not clear to me what data is included but the results, at any rate, were in alphabetical order of country code and included for example Australia and Canada. Family data is also available. I tried searching for ``Schmidt'' as an inventor and ``fahrrad'' [bicycle] as a word in the text and got 22 hits but no indication of exactly where in the speci®cation the word is found. A PDF copy is made available where a search can be made using its own search capability. I will look at the database again when an English interface appears. Japan has had a number of changes. Many database URLs have changed although these feed o€ the central site at . The Patent Abstracts of Japan site at has access to the Japanese text and to B documents (through the number ordering feature). The (machine) translation ability of the speci®cation through the ``Details'' option when an abstract is seen is useful although sometimes, in my experience, it has disappeared and can sometimes be desperately slow. There is also a Japan single authority site on the Esp@cenet site at . If you are doing a search for Japanese information on free sites it is not always obvious which site to start with. I tried a very simplistic search for Japanese patents in the class A61K that mentioned the word ``arthritis'' in the abstract ®eld on a number of databases to compare them. The results were: Patent Abstracts of Japan (PAJ) Esp@cenet national (`Japan') ®le Esp@cenet worldwide ®le

819 hits 554 hits 45 hits

The free PAJ site only has material from 1993. There are CD-ROMs giving coverage (which varies as some topics were initially not covered) from 1976 held at the British Library by IPC cluster. The priced Patolis-e service, which has a new English-language interface, is at . This database incorporates the CD-ROM data and also provides varying coverage back to the 1950s, and includes utility models which otherwise cannot be searched. I tried the search in the Derwent Innovations Index, a subscription Internet service (available free to personal callers at the British Library) and got an impressive 4343 hits. Admittedly these results are not exactly comparable as for example the PAJ data does not include foreign applicants, but it does show how sometimes you get what you pay for.

Japan has also placed databases for its FI/F term at and for ``patent mapping'' at . FI is extensions to the International Patent Classi®cation, rather like ECLA, while F-terms are the unique Japanese classi®cation. Issue 19 of Patent Abstracts of Japan news at explains about their use. Norway's patents gazette is now available from 2001 as Adobe Acrobat copies at to join its design and trade mark journals. Sweden has a prototype database for trade marks, which apparently is not yet complete, at . Thailand has launched a patent database at . The United States is ®nally publishing its applications (unless they are US-only ®lings) from the 15 March at the site . Only a few are so far coming through but estimates are that it will grow to 3500 per week. The complete texts can be searched by keyword like grants but there are two little problems. The ®rst is that I would have preferred to have had the two databases, grants and applications, merged into one with the option of only allowing one set to be searched by clicking a box. The other problem is that the assignee name cannot be searched for as this information is not given (at least not regularly) on the applications. It would seem that such information is best searched for on the PCT database or a similar source. The United States also has a new database for patent maintenance fees at . Searches are carried out by entering not just the published number but also the application number. Hence for US 4717015 you also need to enter in a second box 06318395 (06 being the 6th series of such numbers). Information on the payment of fees is then supplied. I found this site awkward to use and hope that the need for the application number is removed. Finally, the United States's Ocial Gazette notices from 1964 are available at the site . They can be searched from 1995 onwards. Steve van Dulken The British Library 96, Euston Road London, NW1 2DB, UK E-mail address: [email protected]