Registries Flashcards
What does the European Patent Register show?
A database that provides a list of documents that make up a patent family.
What should you be aware of when searching EPO (European Patent Register)
- Information may not be complete (saw several examples of this)
- Application and patent numbers don’t always align from database to database, try adding or removing zeroes, removing / and adding country code and year.
What is the Derwant Innovation Index?
A commercial service that has optimized on EPO, WIPO (PatentScope), USPTO etc. - should not be used alone, and USPTO + PatentScope (WIPO) also offer full-text searches and should be utilized.
What should sciFinder be used for?
- patents on chemichal compounds, low molecular weight molecules.
What should you do if you want to check for patents on gene sequences?
- BLAST it (ofc ;-) ) trough the NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology) or EMBL (European Molecular Biology Laboratory) as the NCBI usually has an American bias.
What kind of algebra does Derwant utilize?
Boolean algebra
What does AND, OR and SAME do in Derwant?
- AND, show me results for this and this
- OR, show me results for this or this
- SAME, show me results where both these words are in the same sentence.
What is a hierarchical search profile?
Casting the widest nets and then combining them for broad, but relevant search results. You want some that are not relevant or it’s too specific and you don’t want it to narrow to loose results.
What are Derwant Manual codes?
Codes specifying a certain area assigned to all patents and applications in Derwent, for example, that vaccines in general, can be used to find patents that don’t necessarily use the terms you would expect.
Use them early to gather terms for a well-thought out hierarchical search strategy.
Are Derwant and the real patent title and abstracts the same?
No, they are rephrased by real people to make them more searchable.
What should you be aware of when searching USPTO?
1) Application where visible from 2001, and patents from 1976, therefore they are searched individually.
2) Boolean expressions can be used, but built them in Derwant and then combine them into one big boolean expression in USPTO.
What is PatentScope?
WIPO, the website of the PCT. PatentScope is their search engine.
You can view the PCT application, patent families, claims, national phases, documents etc.
When comparing gene sequences to look for patentability, what value should you look at?
You should look at the e-value (similarity), the smaller the E-value, the better the match.
What is smart about sciFinder?
You can search for molecular structure and give them wildcards on certain positions to see variations of the molecule.
Where COULD you, but probably shouldn’t you, search for chemical compounds?
On Derwant and PatentScope, they are more cumbersome and not as developed though as you have to search for the names. PatentScope however is free, which is great.
How do you know if you focus in your hierarchical search strategy is to narrow?
read abstracts. If more than 40% of your hits are also relevant hits chances are that you have focused too much
Why do you do a hierarchical search strategy?
To search domains relevant to your freedom to operate/overlaps with other patents.
Check for:
- My own technical solution to a technical problem (to check for novelty including orthologs, prodrugs, precursors etc.)
- Competing solutions with same technical problem
- Technologies I depend on for my solution
What is a blob diagram?
An overview of domains with relevance to your freedom to operate to use as a tool in your search profiles.
What is the European Patent Register and what can you find there?
A database and a tool to use for determining patent status, patent family and gain access to All documents.
All documents is where you can follow the communication between applicants and patent authorities.
Evaluation reports are among the most valuable documents when you want to judge the strength of an application.
Covers patent families with at least one PCT or EP member.
What is USPTO and what can you find there?
USPTO is the patent authority of United States.
You can find patents and patent applications searched by number or by data base query of limited flexibility, but the query may cover the entire patent texts.
US applications have only been published after 2001.
What is US Public PAIR?
US Public Pair is the US equivalent of European Patent Register providing access to the transaction history between applicant and examiner.
What is NCBI’s BLAST service in a patent sense?
A BLAST service against sequence (gene, AA etc.) listings in patents.
What is SciFinder?
A research discovery tool that allows you to search the CAS databases for patents on the basis of chemical structures.
What two databsses are similar and what do they gain acess to?
US Public PAIR and European Patent Register
- Shows the prosecution. That is, the interaction between the patent applicant and the examiner and current legal events.
