How to do Patent Search in WIPO Database?

June 27, 2022
- Intellectual Property (IP)
- State of the Art

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.

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
FP	Front Page	FP:("car battery cooling"~10) FP:(Drake) FP:( WO2010000001) FP:( EP2002001709) FP:( "deliver* drone"~5) FP:(elect?icit?) FP:( battery^10 and cooling^3)	The search is done in the Field Section against the Title, Abstract, Numbers, Names, etc.
EN_ALL	Any Field - English All	EN_ALL:("car battery cooling"~10)/ (drone or quadcopter)	The search is done in any of the fields (in English).
EN_ALLTXT	Full Text - English Text	EN_ALLTXT:("car battery cooling"~10)/ (drone or quadcopter)	The search is done in Full text of a patent reference( in English).
ALLNUM	All Numbers and IDs	This function can be used to search against the application number, the PCT publication number, the national publication number, and the priority number in WIPO patents ALLNUM:(US201000*) ALLNUM:(29876 CU) ALLNUM:(2019 1233 MX)	When searching for a particular patent reference number, the patent reference number is entered in the search field. The database searches the value against the application number, the PCT publication number, the national publication number, and the priority number.
IC	International Class	IC:(A or A61F or "A61F7" or "A61F7/00")	It allows to search patent references classified under specific International Classification(s)
IM	Inventor Name	IN:(WAYNE, Bruce)	It allows to search patent references with specific inventor(s)
PA	Applicant Name	PA:(CORPORATION, Bayer)	It allows to search patent references with specific assignee(s)
DP	Publication Date	DP:(2020) DP:(202001) DP:( 20200112) DP:([01.01.2010 TO 01.12.2019])	It allows to search patent references that were published within a specific time-period.

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:

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Step 5

Step 6

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Step 5

Step 6

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:

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Step 3

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Step 8

Step 9

Exemplary Table

The following table shows usage examples of different field functions while using PATENTSCOPE database.

Field	Definition	Usage Examples
PD	Priority Date	PD:(2020) , PD:(202001) , PD:( 20200112) , PD:([01.01.2010 TO 01.12.2019])
AD	Application Date	AD:(2020) AD:(202001) , AD:( 20200112) , AD:([01.01.2010 TO 01.12.2019])
DP	Publication Date	DP:(2020) DP:(202001) , DP:( 20200112) , DP:([01.01.2010 TO 01.12.2019])
DG	Grant Date	DG:(2020) , DG:(202001) , DG:( 20200112) , DG:([01.01.2010 TO 01.12.2019])
AN	Application Number	Application numbers with or without the country code can be used in various forms. AN:(US2010*)
PN	Publication Number	Publication numbers with or without the country code can be used in various forms. PN:(CU121*) , PN:(JP1997764886) , PN:(JP9887665) , PN:(JP09098765) , PN:(JPH9764457) , PN:(JPH9-098765)
WO	WIPO Publication Number	WO:(2010/000152)
CPC	Cooperative Patent Classification	CPC:(A61F7/00)
IC	International Class	IC:(A or A61F or "A61F7" or "A61F7/00")
CLASSIF	All Classifications	CLASSIF:(A61F 7/00)
IN	Inventor Name	IN:(WAYNE, Bruce)
PA	Applicant Name	PA:(CORPORATION, Bayer)
ALLNUM	All Numbers and IDs	This function can be used to search against the application number, the PCT publication number, the national publication number, and the priority number in WIPO patents ALLNUM:(US201000*) , ALLNUM:(29876 CU) , ALLNUM:(2019 1233 MX)
CTR	Country	CTR: (US or CN)
EN_AB	English Abstract	EN_AB:("car battery cooling"~10) EN_AB:(drone or quadcopter)
EN_ALL	English All	EN_ALL:("car battery cooling"~10) EN_ALL:(drone or quadcopter)
EN_ALLTXT	English Text	EN_ALLTXT:("car battery cooling"~10) EN_ALLTXT:(drone or quadcopter)
EN_CL	English Claims	EN_CL:("car battery cooling"~10) EN_CL:(drone or quadcopter)
EN_DE	English Description	EN_DE:("car battery cooling"~10) EN_DE:(drone or quadcopter)
EN_TI	English Title	EN_TI:("car battery cooling"~10) EN_TI:(drone or quadcopter)
FP	Front Page	FP:("car battery cooling"~10) , FP:(Drake) , FP:( WO2010000001) , FP:( EP2002001709) , FP:( "deliver* drone"~5) , FP:(elect?icit?) , FP:( battery^10 and cooling^3)

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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How to do Patent Search in WIPO Database?

Introduction

Table of Contents

WIPO PATENTSCOPE

Simple Search

Some examples while doing a Simple Search in PATENTSCOPE

Advanced Search

Field Combination Search

Cross Lingual Expansion/ Cross-Lingual Information Retrieval Interface (CLIR)

Chemical Compound search

Exemplary Table

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