Report:Thomson Innovation/Search Syntax/Searchable Datafields/Patent Fields

Attorney-Agent/Correspondent
...Attorney-Agent
......Attorney-Agent Address
...Correspondent
......Correspondent Address

This field is available for the US, EP, WO, CA, DE, FR, JP, CN, KR, and Native Japanese collections (with the exception that Agent/Correspondent (AGCR), Correspondent (CR), and Correspondent Address (CRAD) are not available in Native Japanese collections). The field may sometimes include just the name of the company or law firm, but may also include address information. In the case of US published applications, which are often published without assignees, the correspondent information may include the name or address of the company’s legal department, or the name of a person who can be associated with that company, this field can be useful when searching for published applications that may belong to a certain company of interest.^[1]

Application Number
The application number is a unique number assigned to an application when it is filed. For later applications that are filed under Paris Convention standards (within 12 months of first filing), the earliest application date in the chain of related filings will be referred to as the “priority.” In Innovation, it often appears alongside the application date, in the joint field “application number/date.”

The application number plays a special role in Innovation as one of the parameters searchers can use to “collapse” results sets by family. Using the Sort & Display Options menu from the Results Set page, users can choose to display only one record from a group of documents with the same application number.

Assignee/Applicant
...Assignee/Applicant Address
...Assignee/Applicant-Original
...Assignee/Applicant-Standardized

There are two points of interest here. Firstly, Innovation has tagged the standardized applicant name used by the European Patent Office’s worldwide patent family database, DOCDB. The second is that the applicant address has also been tagged separately, and may be searched.

It should be noted that Assignee/Applicant information is not updated when reassignments are made. In the Native Japanese collections, only one field is shown and it is named Applicant/Patentee (multiple names can be shown within it), and it is the person or entity to whom ownership of a patent belongs at the time of publication.^[1]

Background/Summary
This field is only available for US documents, and sometimes the information is not populated (and is shown as part of the Description). Because it is not consistently populated, this search field should not be relied upon to provide a comprehensive search. According to the help file, this field is not discretely searchable.

Citations
...Cited Patents
......Relevance Category
......Source
...Cited Non-patents

The Relevance Category field refers to examiner-applied relevance codes, which are searchable for citations in both EP and WO records.^[1]

The Source field refers to the source of the citation on the record. In the US collections, Source is shown as Examiner (the patent examiner) or Other (the author, inventor, or applicant). In all other collections, the Source column is populated with numeric codes (0-7):^[1]

• 0 - Search report (examiner)
• 1 - Applicant
• 2 - Was revealed during the examination phase
• 3 - Was revealed during the opposition phase
• 4 - Article 115 (revealed by third parties)
• 7 - Form 892 (Notice of References Cited)

The Source field is not discretely searchable, but the information in the Source field is searchable using the main Citations field and the SAME operator.^[1]

Claims
...Claims (English)
...Claims (French)
...Claims (German)
...Claims (Spanish)

Users should note that the Help guide for Innovation states that claims-specific search will only work in the United States (US), European Patent Office (EP), Patent Cooperation Treaty (WO/PCT), Germany (DE), and Native Japanese collections (language specific subfields Claims (English), Claims (French), Claims (German), and Claims (Spanish) are not available in the Native Japanese collections).^[1] However, when tested, it appeared that a claims search could also be successful in other collections where claims were available, including the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Japanese human-assisted translation, Chinese human-assisted translation, and Korean machine translation collections. This may just be an error in the Help guide.

DE Translation Of
As discussed in the Data Coverage section, there is no separate file for German translations of EP and PCT documents, but the data coverage is there in the existing German collections. This field may be used to identify these translations when the EP or PCT document number is known.

Description
...Technical Field
...Background Art
...Problem
...Solution
...Effect
...Mode
...Example/Embodiment
...Drawing Description

The Description field is available for US, EP, PCT, DE, and Native Japanese collections.^[1]

The subfields Technical Field (TF), Background Art (BA), Problem (PS), Solution (SP), Effect (EI), Mode (MI), Example/Embodiment (EE), and Drawing Description (DRD) are only available in the collections in the Native Japanese content set. Problem (PS), Solution (SP), and Effect (EI) are only available for April 2009 - present.^[1]

Designated States
Designated states are the countries in which the application would like to gain patent protection. This field is only provided in the EP, PCT, INPADOC (“Other Authorities”), and Native Japanese collections.

Drawing Description
This field provides a description of the drawings in the publication, and it isn't discretely searchable. This "version" of the field is for US, EP, PCT, and DE collections only. Abstract-DWPI Drawing Desc (DRW) is a searchable subfield of Abstract-DWPI, and for the collections in the Native Japanese content set, Drawing Description (DRD) is a searchable subfield of Description.^[1]

ECLA and ICO
Detailed information on the ECLA classification system can be found here. When an ECLA class is searched in Innovation, it can be searched as it is shown in the record view (C07K 14/175) or with the main group zero filled (to the left) to four digits and punctuation removed (C07K0014175).^[1] Although ECLA classifications are not present for all records, the field may be searched in all Innovation collections.

According to the help file, ICO (In Computer Only) is an indexing scheme that the European Patent Office search examiners developed for their internal use to cover minor aspects of the invention. Although based on ECLA classification symbols, the initial letters are different, so as not to be confused with ECLA. Search for ICO codes using the ECLA (EC) field, and they will be displayed in the ECLA field on the record view. The same formatting rules apply.

EPO Procedural Status
...EPO Procedural Status-Date
...EPO Procedural Status-Event

EPO procedural status describes the procedural steps that have been completed in the EP process for patent documents. Although this field may be searched by date, it cannot be searched using date ranges. This data is obtained from the EPO itself on a weekly basis, usually Thursdays.^[1] To obtain up-to-the-minute status data on a particular document, Innovation also provides a link to European Patent Register, the European Patent Office’s online legal status register. Users need only to click this "current status" hyperlink, which appears next to the EPO Procedural Status data field, and a new window will open displaying the EPO’s current status data.

The EPO Procedural Status display, with hyperlink that opens the European Patent Register data in a separate window.

The EPO’s current status information for the patent, which is more timely and accurate than Innovation's legal status data.

Although the need to search by using this data will probably be rare, the fact that it is searchable, and also that the data is displayed in Innovation, are both advantages of the system. When accurate status information is needed, users should always rely on the link to the European Patent Register, which is the authoritative source on the status of EP documents.

Examination
...Kind of Examination
...Examination Request Date
...Kind of Final Decision
...Final Decision Dispatch Date
...Kind of Disposition in Exam
...Disposition in Exam Date
...Examination Additional Information

This field is only available for the Native language Japanese patent collection in Innovation. A search within the primary field (Examination) automatically searches all sub fields listed above.

Date range searching is permitted within the date-related subfields.

Examiner
This field is only available for the US collection. It displays the name of the US examiner who reviewed the patent, and is searchable. The ability to search by examiner name is not offered by all comparable search engines. Displaying examiner data is useful when users would like to verify a class search with a US examiner; the data can also be helpful to find a sampling of patents that may all be closely related in subject matter (although this method may not be totally reliable, and certainly not comprehensive).

Japanese FI codes and F-terms
Thomson Innovation supports searching the Japanese collection by classification systems known as Japanese FI (File Index) codes and F terms for English translated full text Japanese collections, DWPI, and the collections in the Native Japanese content set.^[1]

Field of Search
According to the Thomson Innovation help file, "Field of Search" is defined as the FI Codes that represent the fields examined prior to the granting of the patent. This data is developed/entered by the patent examiner. This field is only available for records in the Native Japanese collection.^[1]

Government Interest
This field lists a description of any interest the US government has in this patent. It is a US-specific field, and it is searchable in Innovation. It appears in the Legal Status section of the patent record view.

INPADOC Legal Status
...INPADOC Legal Status Code
...INPADOC Legal Status Date
...INPADOC Legal Status Text
...INPADOC Legal Status Impact

INPADOC legal status is the standard legal status file loaded onto most patent search engines that offer a legal status check. It is produced by the European Patent Office (EPO), which collects legal status information from over 60 countries around the globe. The EPO updates this file on a weekly basis, so more up-to-date information can often be found in the national legal status register managed by the individual countries themselves. For example, the European Patent Register database may show changes in legal status before they appear in INPADOC.

INPADOC legal status information became available for Japanese publications in January 2012, and the data released by the EPO at that time went back to April 2011. This field is not available for records in the Native Japanese collections.^[1]

The interesting thing about this data on Innovation is that it can be searched selectively using the Code, Date, Text, and Impact subfields, a level of detail that is not available on some other search engines. The date field only allows single-date searching; date range searching is not permitted.

Inventor
...Inventor-Original
...Inventor Address (does not appear in drop-down menu of fielded search, but can be searched via command line code “INAD”)

In Innovation, searching the primary field (“Inventor”) automatically searches all sub-fields, meaning that an “Inventor” search should search both the inventor names and inventor addresses in the system. Thus, a search for the last name of “Smith” should hypothetically result in some hits from inventors who live on “Smith St.” In actual experience, however, it seems that the Innovation team has done something to prevent the address information from being automatically searched. To limit the search to just the original inventor names, users should choose “Inventor-Original” from the drop down menu (or use the command-line code “INO” as opposed to the more general “IN”). The "Inventor-Original" field is not valid in the Japanese Native language collections. (The Derwent inventor information (Inventor- DWPI, code “IND”) may also be used as a limiting field, if the users subscribes to that information.)

Note: Although the Inventor Address is a searchable field in Innovation, the full inventor address does not always appear in the Record View display in Innovation. For example, a search on INAD=(Clover) produced record US7203570B2, and the inventor data was listed as “Karlen James P., Bethel, OH, US.” Upon further examination of the patent document itself, James P. Karlen was found to live on Clover St, which is what caused the hit to successfully come up as a search result.

Language
This field defines the publication language of the record, and it is available on all records except those in the Native Japanese collection. According to the Thomson Innovation help file, the Language field is shown on the record view with the Translation of field. The only connection between the fields, however, is that, if the Translation of field is populated, the Language field will always show German because the Translation of field is limited to the DE collection.^[1]

License
...Licensee Name
...License Date

This data is limited to EP collections only. It provides the name of any company who subsequently licensed the patented technology, along with the license date. This collection is unusual among comparable search engines, and represents one more advantage to Innovation. The source of this data, as well as the update schedule and publication delay for this information is not known. Date range searching is not permitted in this field.^[1]

Litigation
...Plaintiff
...Defendant
...Court
...Litigation Filing Date
...Litigation Docket Number
...Subsequent Action

The litigation data in Innovation is limited to US patents only. It comes from Westlaw®, another Thomson Reuters company. It provides information about subsequent court cases that have been filed relating to the subject patent. Date range searching is not possible in this field. According to the Thomson Innovation help file, the information is derived and compiled from the electronic filings of the federal district courts and updated on Thomson Innovation weekly. The time from informational availability from the courts to information availability on Thomson Innovation can be from 1-6 days.^[1]

Locarno Class
The Locarno Classification for Industrial Designs is assigned to US Design (USD) patents issued after May 6, 1997, and this field is available for US records only.^[1]

Opposition
...Opponent
...Date Opposition Filed
...Opposition Attorney

The opposition data is limited to the EP collections only. In the European patent system, for certain period of time after a patent has been granted, third parties are able to file “oppositions” to show that they believe that the patent should not be granted. Innovation displays opposition data, including the date filed, the opposing party, and the opposition attorney. The source for this data is the European Patent Office, and the data is also available (in more detail) on European Patent Register, including the addresses of the opposed parties and the future dates when the opposition hearing will be held. Data about the content or basis for opposition is not given. Updates to this information are not known, but should be consistent with updates to EP procedural status information.

Registration and Post Registration
...Registration Number
...Registration Date
...Final Date of Duration
...Cancelation Classification
...Date of Cancelation of Rights
...Register Closing Date
...Registration/Post-Registration Additional Information

This field and sub fields display information relative to the registration and post-registration of patent/utilities applications, and they are only available on records in the Native Japanese collection. Date range searching is permitted in the date-specific subfields Registration Date (RGD), Date of Cancelation of Rights (DCR), and Register Closing Date (RCD). Searching the primary field (Registration) automatically searches all sub fields.^[1]

Related Applications
...Related Applications- App Number
...Related Applications-App Date
...Related Applications-Pub Number
...Related Applications-Pub Date

This field and sub fields are available for US and Native Japanese collections (Related Applications-App Number (RAN) and Related Applications-Pub Number (RPN) are not explicitly searchable in the US collections), and the field provides information on prior applications (continuations, continuation-in-parts, divisionals, or reissues of an earlier patent or application) related to this record.^[1]

Trial and Appeal
…Trial/Appeal Number
…Date of Demand
…Trial/Appeal Type
…Demandant
…Defendant
…Opponent
…Trial/Appeal Decision
…Trial/Appeal Decision Date
…Final Disposition
…Final Disposition Date

This field provides information on trials and appeals processes involving a patent, and it is available only for records in the Native Japanese collection. Searching the primary field, Trial and Appeal (LTA), automatically searches all sub fields.^[1]

US Class
...US Class-Current
......US Class-Current Main
...US Class-Original
......US Class-Original Main
...Field of Search

This field displays the US Patent Classification code to which this patent is assigned, and the field is available for US Granted patents. The USPTO provides updated information about a patent's classification as classes expand and change. The original class is the class that was assigned when a patent was originally published. The current class is the class to which a patent is now assigned.

The Field of Search is the list of codes the represent the fields that were examined prior to the granting of the patent. This data is developed/entered by the patent examiner. Field of Search is also a used in Native Japanese Patents.^[1]

US Maintenance Status
US maintenance fee status data is provided for the US collection. The source for this data is the US patent office, although this information is not as timely as the data loaded in the USPTO Patent Application Information Retrieval system (PAIR); for any important maintenance fee status investigations, PAIR should always be consulted. There is no link to PAIR from the Innovation website, probably because security practices at the USPTO would not permit Thomson to develop an automatic-query system like the one it has established for users to check EP procedural status. This data is updated on a weekly basis, usually Tuesdays.^[1]

In addition, as of September 2012 the Thomson Innovation help file gives the following information about the data in this field:

Currently, the US Maintenance Status field is not as timely as the equivalent information in the INPADOC Legal Status and the US Post Issuance fields and, therefore, these two fields should be used rather than US Maintenance Status.

Editor's Note:

A maintenance fee status search in Innovation must be done using the US maintenance fee codes, a list of which is provided by Innovation for users to reference. This implementation of maintenance fee searching is not as user-friendly as one implemented by another Thomson product, Delphion, which provides a separate drop-down menu displaying each code with its definition. When using Delphion, searchers did not have to refer to a code sheet. However, this was probably a necessary sacrifice when the larger consideration of streamlining the fielded search interface was considered by Innovation developers. In the larger sense, Delphion’s search interface is much bulkier than the one offered by Innovation, and maintenance status searches are probably rare enough that this minor inconvenience should not impact the overall workflow improvements that can be gained by switching from Delphion to Innovation.

US Post-Issuance
Post issuance activity data is available for the US collection. This field provides details of any activity that occurred on this patent after it was issued, which could include:^[1]

• Adverse decision
• Certificate of correction
• Delayed maintenance fee
• Disclaimer Filed (Terminal Disclaimer)
• Expiration
• Notices of litigation
• Reexamination request
• Reissue statement

This field is not always displayed as part of the record view.

US Reassignment
...US Reassignment Assignee
...US Reassignment Assignor
...US Reassignment Date
...US Reassignment Conveyance
...US Reassignment Reel-Frame

These fields show data related to the re-assignment or new ownership of US patents after they are issued. When patents change hands, reporting this event to the USPTO is voluntary. Therefore, re-assignment records kept by the USPTO cannot be complete, but are still a valuable resource despite this limitation. This collection is provided by the USPTO, and this data is updated on a weekly basis, usually on Fridays.^[1] The Reel-Frame term refers to the reel and frame number of the microfiche these files were originally kept on. Newer reassignments are not actually transferred to microfiche, but they are still given reel-frame numbers as accession numbers, to keep the collection standardized.

Limitations

Although each data field in Innovation has its own limitations related to the nature, quantity, source and update frequency of the data (see the section above for details), the specific limitations of date fields are summarized below.

According to the Innovation help file, in fields that include a date associated with other information, the date format used must be YYYYMMDD. Additionally, date range searching is not permitted in the following fields:

EPO Procedural Status

INPADOC Legal Status

License

Litigation

Opposition

PCT Applications

Related Applications

US Reassignment

Editor's Note:

Although not specifically stated in the help file, date range searching doesn't seem to be available in the US Post-Issuance (USPI) field.

Custom Fields

Custom fields are available for patents only (excluding the Native Japanese Patent content set), and only administrators can create Custom Fields.^[3] According to the Thomson help file, administrators create Custom Fields, establish values for the fields, and upload the fields and values to specific patent records, while users can (when granted permission) edit Custom Fields from result sets or record views.^[3] Seven types of Custom Fields can be created (field types refer to both the type of data allowed in the Custom Fields and to how you enter values into those Custom Fields):^[3]

• Date fields
• Multi-select fields (multi-select lists and dropdown boxes)
• Numeric fields
• Single-select fields (dropdown lists and radio buttons)
• Text fields
• URL fields
• Year fields

The Thomson Innovation help file lists these additional fundamental facts about Custom Fields:^[3]

• Single- and multi-select type fields have predefined values that administrators enter individually or upload via .txt file.
• Only one value can be chosen at one time for a single-select type field on a given record; multi-select lists let you store multiple values.
• User access to Custom Fields is permissions based with three permissions options (controlled by your administrator):
  • Read Only access
  • Read & Write (edit) access
  • No access
• IP Authenticated users can only be granted Read Only permissions.
• Custom Fields are available for searching on both the Fielded Search form and the Expert Search form.
• Custom Fields can be displayed on both result sets (including work file result sets) and record views.
• Search aids are available to assist you in selecting values for single- and multi-select type fields, and a calendar tool is available to help you with date type fields.
• Custom Fields can be exported, used in ThemeScape maps, and included in templates.
• Custom Fields will not display on your result set unless you select them for display via Result Set Preferences.
• Up to 1,000,000 records can have Custom Fields values applied in your company.
• Up to 100 unique Custom Fields can be created (by your administrator).
• Custom Fields are available to Analyst, Pro, and Express users.
• Only users with DWPI entitlements can see Custom Fields that apply to DWPI fields.
• Highlighting for Custom Fields is available for both result sets and record views. Note that Custom Fields allow special characters that are not allowed in highlighting (colons, for example). Search terms with characters that cannot be highlighted will not be highlighted in the result set or record view.
• Alerts cannot be created from queries containing Custom Fields.

As of September 2011, the following enhancements were added to the Custom Fields feature:^[4]

• Analyze Custom Field values in Charting, Clustering and Citation Maps, along with global patent data.
• Automatically apply Custom Field values to all records in a DWPI family when a value is added to just one family member.
• Import data from internal company databases into Custom Fields, folder hierarchies and Work Files.
• Utilize colored flags for quick recognition of records with specified values.
• Leverage new field types, including multi-valued pick lists, check boxes, radio buttons and URLs.

Custom fields accessed through the Fielded Search form (image from Thomson Innovation help files).

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 1.22 1.23 1.24 1.25 1.26 1.27} "Patent Fields (and Tags)." Thomson Innovation website, http://www.thomsoninnovation.com/tip-innovation/support/help/index.htm#patent_fields.htm. Accessed September 11, 2012.
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} "Searching Any Class." Micropat website, http://aureka.micropat.com/7w/html/applications/online_help/aos_help/ipc_or_ecla.htm. Accessed September 11, 2012.
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3} "Custom Fields." Thomson Innovation website, http://www.thomsoninnovation.com/tip-innovation/support/help/custom_fields.htm. Accessed September 12, 2012.
4. ↑ ""What's New in Thomson Innovation." Thomson Innovation website, http://info.thomsoninnovation.com/whatsnew . Accessed September 13, 2012.