A large number of patent documents having valuable technical information are added annually to various databases. It has said that more than 80% of the technical information appears only in patent documents. However, the key point is how to achieve these valuable resources. To this end, numerous databases have been developed by patent offices, international organizations, and private companies active in the field of intellectual property, one of the most famous of which is "PATENTSCOPE".
This site was set up primarily focusing on applications registered under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) to provide the full text of all published documents to interested parties. In this free database, a wide range of patent documents are available and users can search for patent files and find them by entering keywords, names of applicants, inventors, and international patent classifications and publish or filing data. The database currently hosts 95 million patents, including 9.3 million PCT files.
Regarding the main target audience of PATENSCOPE, the World Intellectual Property Organization states the patent scope function as: "Registered or not if you are a researcher and interested in advanced technologies in your field if you are an entrepreneur and looking for competitors and key people in your industry, PATENSCOPE search engine would help you as a useful tool to achieve your goals."
Perhaps one of the main questions surrounding this patent database is how many patents this database has covered. In other words, by searching in this database, the published patents of which countries and regions will be found? In response, it should be noted that in addition to PCT publications, a wide range of national and regional patents are covered by this database, including the African Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) and the Eurasian Patent Office (EAPO). , European Patent Office (EPO), US Patent and Trademark Office, South Korean Intellectual Property Office, Japan Patent Office, and China Intellectual Property Office. Interestingly, a collection of patents from neighboring countries, such as Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, is also available in this database.
It should be noted that the World Intellectual Property Organization is constantly improving and providing new capabilities and features, which facilitates the search process and help to access more relevant and richer documents. Obviously, familiarity with these features and the methods for using them can lead to better search results for users. One of the most important features of this system is searching for possibilities in different languages, which facilitates the search of patent documents from different countries. Currently, it is possible to search in 10 different languages, including English, French, Arabic, and Spanish. In addition, WIPO has introduced a tool called "WIPO Translate" as part of its policy of simplifying the patent search process and giving users more access to patent documents. Working with this tool is very simple and you just need to copy the text in the specified box (less than 2000 characters) and select a language pair to identify the text and translate it into another language.
How to search in "PATENSCOPE"?
To search for "PATENSCOPE", there are five different options:
1. Simple Search:
This option is the default search of this database. In the search box, you can limit the search area to the following:
• "Front Page": Search for phrases on the first page of patent documents that include titles, abstracts, names, and numbers;
• "Any Field": search in different parts of the patent document;
• "Full-text": full-text search;
• "English text": search for texts in English;
• "ID / Number": Search by number;
• "IPC": Search by "IPC" classification;
• "Names": search by names (inventor, applicant, company, etc.);
• "Dates": Search by dates (application submission date, publication date, etc.).
۲. Advanced Search:
The second search method is to use the advanced search option, which makes possible a very complex search. Using various operators, including Boolean operators, proximity operators, and functions, allows users to fully customize their search results. (In patent search systems, we need to use a combination of words and terms related to the concept in order to identify the documents closest to that concept.
Operators help us to make the search process more accurate and target-oriented; the Boolean operators "AND", "OR" and "AND NOT", help the user to expand or limit the scope of the search by combining different terms to obtain the most accurate documents we want.
The search options available for the advanced PATENTSCOPE search are:
• Ability to select the patent office for a more limited search;
• Select a specific language to search documents in that language;
• Ability to search words with the same root (Stemming): The advanced search has this option by default, which allows you to search for words with the same root. For example, if you are searching for electricity in English, all words like electric, electricity, and electrical that have the same root will be considered.
Expanding with Related Terms: With this option, it is possible to automatically identify synonyms for the searched terms.
3. Field Combination Search:
Combined search, in addition to the capabilities of advanced search, provides more possibilities for a more professional searcher. With this method, you can define a combination of different options as the default by default, and thus, have a more accurate search.
This search method has “AND" and "OR" operators by default and it is not necessary to type this operator but only by selecting. They are used in between to help you apply a logical combination of what you have in mind. For example, you can easily define a combination of “a specific date and name of an inventor”, "a specific company and an IPC code", or "inventor and company name", etc. as your primary requirements and your search scope make it more limited and focused.
4. CROSS LINGUAL EXPANSION:
"CLIR" (Cross-Lingual Information Retrieval) is a tool to expand your search in other languages. For example, the user enters a keyword in English and the list of results, including its synonyms in 12 other languages, including Chinese, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish is offered. Obviously, this feature can greatly expand the search results and its scope and search virtually all key phrases (up to 5 phrases) in 13 languages.
5. Chemical structure search:
The fifth option embedded by WIPO is to search for chemical information in patent documents. This system, due to the recent changes in "PATENTSCOPE", requires registration and obtaining a username and password.
