How to do Patent Search in WIPO Database?
Introduction
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is a self-funded international organization of the United Nations (UN) that has 193 signatory parties as to its member states. WIPO came into existence by virtue of the WIPO Convention in 1967. The organization was formed to promote the creation of IP and mandate the protection of IP across the world.
Prior to the establishment of WIPO, the process of filing a patent was a very time-consuming and costly process for an applicant to file for a patent in different jurisdictions. This resulted in a reduction in the creation of IP across the world. WIPO was established to promote cooperation among its member states and in collaboration with other international organizations. Its headquarters are established in Geneva & Switzerland.
The creation of WIPO allowed a patent applicant to file an international application designating various states without having to approach each state individually. WIPO does not only allow for the filing of international applications but also provides databases and platforms to search the existing IP.
Table of Contents
WIPO PATENTSCOPE
WIPO provides a patent searching database named PATENTSCOPE. This database allows a user to access internationally filed Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications as well as patent documents of participating national and regional patent offices. WIPO patent search allows to access the patents in different languages by machine translating the text. Documents can be seen in English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Korean, Japanese, Arabic, etc.
PATENTSCOPE allows a user to perform 5 kinds of searches, namely:
Simple Search
Simple Search is a basic searching platform provided by PATENTSCOPE where a user can access patent documents by searching using any of the 7 provided fields of search in the “Field Section”. These 7 Fields of Searching are:
- Front Page
- Any Field
- Full Text
- ID Number
- Intl. Classification(IPC)
- Names
- Publication Date
There are some limitations while doing a simple search. A maximum of 3 wildcards per query can be entered for non-logged-in users and 7 wildcards maximum per query for logged-in users.
There are some steps that are needed to be followed for doing a Simple Search in PATENTSCOPE:
- Select the field of search
- Add the search terms for the search
- Run a Search
Some examples while doing a Simple Search in PATENTSCOPE
| Field | Definition | Usage Examples | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
Advanced Search
PATENTSCOPE also provides Advanced Search interface, which is an advanced version of the simple search interface. It is a more useful and effective tool as it offers a wide range of operators that allow customizing results with Boolean operators, proximity operators, range operators, and wildcard operators.
Steps of conducting an Advanced Search:
Type in the search terms in search bar.
Expand the search bar to check your query.
Select offices within which authority a user wants to conduct the search.
Specify the language of your search terms.
Select stemming if you want to avoid the inflected words.
Run the search.
Different option of searches while doing an advanced search:
- In advanced search, a user can get assistance from query assistants along with query examples while creating a search string and can lead to better understanding and performing a search.
- A user can select one or more of the jurisdictions for the search. The user can go to the Offices section to select the required authority.
- A user can also restrict the inflected words to their stem or root form. For example, the words fishing, fished, fish and fisher are reduced to the root word fish, so a search for fisher returns all the different variations by selecting the stemming option. Users need to unselect the stemming option if they do not want to search for variants of a term and want to search for an exact phrase/keyword/sentence.
- Users can restrict to show only one member of a family of patents while conducting a search using this option.
Field Combination Search
There is another type of search interface provided by PATENTSCOPE. It is called Field Combination Search. This interface of the PATENTSCOPE allows a user to search for and access patents across the countries by combining different patent field of search. It allows a user to do a more structural and narrower search as compared to the previous two interfaces. By combining different search fields, a user can save a lot of time by removing some junk patents from the result list using different operators and combining fields during the search.
Process of performing Field Combination search:
- Select fields of search like abstract, IPC, assignees, inventors, dates etc., in which searching has to be performed.
- Enter the search terms in the selected fields according to the searching needs of a user.
- Select offices, languages, stemming, include NPLs, based on the needs of the user.
- Perform the search.
- There are 3 different sections provided for doing a combined search namely, Operator Section, Field Section, and Value Section.
- In the Operator section, a user can select BOOLEAN Operators AND & OR while doing the search.
- In the Field section, a user can select different fields provided and select options under the required field.
- In the Value section, a user can enter the search terms in the chosen field search.
- A user can add more search fields if required and can remove a search field based on his needs.
- This interface also has options like Offices, Languages, Single Family Member, Include NPLs. These options work in the same manner as they do in the advanced search interface explained above.
Cross Lingual Expansion/ Cross-Lingual Information Retrieval Interface (CLIR)
The fourth type of searching interface provided by the PATENTSCOPE is Cross Lingual Expansion Interface. It is also referred to as Cross-Lingual Information Retrieval Interface (CLIR). This interface allows you to enhance the power of search in PCT and National Patent Data Collections. This interface allows users of different languages to perform a search in their language. A searching term can be put in different languages and the term/phrase gets translated by special software developed by WIPO into several other languages.
Currently, the cross-lingual search is available in different languages like English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Chinese, Dutch, Italian, etc.,
- In the precision level, the user can select the precision level to perform the search. The available options are High, Intermediate, Low and Lowest.
- There is an expansion mode with automatic and supervised types to identify and select the technical domains in which a user wants to conduct a search. The Automatic mode identifies the technical domain and synonyms automatically and performs the search.
- The user needs to put his searching terms in the Search terms section. If the user selects the supervised expansion mode, the interface will show an automatically detected search domain. He can add some other technical domains out of the available technical domains form the domains section.
- After selecting the technical domains, an option for expanded synonyms is provided. Here, the user can select the synonyms.
- After selecting the synonyms, the user gets the option to search.
- The user can select the language in which he desires to perform the search. An automated query is shown in the selected language and the user can start the search on that basis.
Steps for performing a cross lingual search
Chemical Compound search
The fifth searching interface provided by WIPO is Chemical Compounds Search Interface. The above explained four interfaces can be used by any person without any need of a WIPO user account. But this interface can be used by only those who have WIPO account credentials. This interface allows a user to search for patents and NPLs which are mentioning a particular chemical compound.
Process of performing Chemical Compound Search:
- Select the Search type option and enter the chemical compound data accordingly in the value field.
- Select the other options like Search for Scaffold, Include Markush Structures, Offices accordingly.
- Perform the search.
- This interface provides option to search a chemical compound based on its compound name, INN, InCHI and SMILES.
- A user can also search for Scaffold by checking in the box for this option.
- A user has the option to include enumerated Markush structures in the search by selecting the option.
- A user can select the required authority for the search criteria from the Offices section. It works in the same manner as it does in the advanced search interface explained above.
- This interface also allows a user to upload an image of the chemical compound to find the patents related to it. A user can upload the accepted formats by WIPO to start a search based on the chemical compound in the image.
- For a better search, a user can draw a structure by using the option of structure editor and can perform a search based on the exact structure.
Exemplary Table
The following table shows usage examples of different field functions while using PATENTSCOPE database.
| Field | Definition | Usage Examples |
|---|---|---|
Furthermore, WIPO is not only limited to do Patent Searching, but can also be utilized to do searching in the fields of Trademarks, Designs, Geographical Indications, and Plant Variety Protection.
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