a survey of patent search engine software jennifer lewis april 24, 2007 cse 8337

A Survey of

Patent Search Engine Software

Jennifer Lewis

April 24, 2007

CSE 8337

Introduction

• This survey was motivated by working with the United States Patent and Trademark Office [1] web site for the Patent Search alternative for Project 1

• Today I will do a brief survey of some existing patent search engines

• This survey will:– Briefly introduce the basic features of a few selected

search engines– Analyze the usefulness of each search engine using

predefined criteria

patent search engine survey

Search Engine Feature Comparisons

• Search engine search interface– Ease of use– Learning curve

• Supported search options– Booleans– Wildcards – Multiple fields– Full text search

• Returned results– Accuracy– Display

• A little help?


Determining Which Search Engines to Survey

• Only free (or free trial) software• Obtained search engine names from the

following sources:– Patent Law Links Patent Search Engines [11]

• Obtained this link from Dr. Maggie Dunham’s CSE 8337 web page [14]

– Uncle Al’s internet search engines [12]– Google [13]

• Only looked at functionality related to U.S. patents


Selected Search Engines

• United States Patent and Trademark Office [1]

• GetThePatent.com [2]• IP-Discover [3]

• Google Patent Search [4]

• Patent Hunter [5]• Free Patents Online

[6]


United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) [1]

• Available search options – Patent Number – Quick Search– Advanced Search


USPTO – Patent Number Search

• Allows searching by patent number and that’s all


USPTO – Quick Search

• Only supports queries on two fields within the patent. One of those fields can be “full text”


USPTO – Advanced Search

• Very flexible – can query against unbounded number of patent fields


USPTO Features

• Search engine search interface– Fairly easy to use. Advanced Search syntax has a small learning curve.

• Supported search options– Booleans are supported in Quick and Advanced Search– Wildcards ($) are supported– Querying against multiple fields is supported in Quick and Advanced

Search– Full text search is supported

• Returned results– Accurate since the USPTO defines accuracy– Display is functional and concise

• Some help is available and is mostly necessary for Advanced Search.


GetThePatent.com [2]

• Searching is free. Viewing the actual patents returned by the search is not.

• Available search options– Text Search– Field Search – Boolean Query Search– Number Search


GetThePatent.com

• Text Search– Can search full text or just one field

• Field Search– Interface to USPTO Advanced Search– All fields AND-ed together. Boolean searches

allowed within one field.


GetThePatent.com

Field

Search

Example


GetThePatent.com

• Boolean Query Search– Identical to USPTO Advanced Search

• Number Search– Can search based on one or more patent

numbers


GetThePatent.com Features

• Search engine search interface– Fairly easy to use. Boolean Query Search syntax has a small

learning curve• Supported search options

– Booleans are supported in differing ways in all searches– Wildcards ($) are supported in Text, Field, and Boolean Query

Searches– Querying against multiple fields is supported in Text, Field, and

Boolean Query Searches– Full text search is supported

• Returned results– Seem similar to USPTO results– Display is functional and concise

• Help is available and is mostly necessary for Boolean Query Search


IP-Discover [3]

• Used an evaluation copy – full version: about $175

• Not web based, but does require an internet connection

• Sort of a glorified search engine – lets you jump to “search sections” of other search engines


IP-Discover

IP-Discover

• Also offers “IPD Search” – cumbersome interfaces to existing search engines


IP-Discover Features

• Search engine search interface– The ones actually implemented by IP-Discover are

unwieldy• Supported search options are the same as

whatever search engine IP-Discover is querying• Returned results

– Seem to be accurate– The results display is cumbersome. Have to

download a document then go dig it up.• Help is only available if you purchase the

software.


IP-Discover Features

SurfIP [4]

• A project of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore• Available search options

– Quick Search– Simple Search– IPC (International Patent Classification) Search – Patent Number Search– Structured Search

• Has the ability to search many different databases


SurfIP – Quick, Simple, & IPC Searches

• Quick Search– Searches full text in all databases

• Simple Search– Searches full text of patents in one or more

selected databases

• IPC (International Patent Classification) Search– Searches selected databases for an IPC

Code


SurfIP – Patent Number & Structured Search

• Patent Number Search– Straightforward search based on patent number. Multiple numbers

supported.• Structured Search

– Maximum 4 search keywords– 6 patent fields – Search criteria

AND-ed


SurfIP Features

• Search engine search interface– Easy to use with a very low learning curve

• Supported search options– Booleans supported

• Structured search ANDs fields together, but Booleans are allowed within the field itself. Example:Inventor Name=fenner OR niedner

– Wildcards (*) supported– Querying against a limited number of fields is supported by the

Structured Search– Full text search is supported

• Returned results– Results are accurate compared to USPTO– Viewing actual patent redirects user to USPTO site– Does not seem to work in Firefox (search often does not complete)

• Help is the correct amount for the functionality provided by SurfIP. Not too detailed, but enough to assist users formulate their queries.


Google Patents [4]

• Provides standard Google search as well as an Advanced Patent Search interface


Google Patents

• It was easier to search with the Advanced Patent Search in order to search particular fields

• Google has converted all imagery from the USPTO database into an easily searchable format.– While the Advanced Patent Search options do not

support searching against all patent fields, the Google search supports searching the full text of the patent


Google Features

• Search engine search interface– Easy to use since for users that are familiar with Google– Low learning curve for users that are unfamiliar with Google

• Supported search options– Booleans are supported

• Advanced Search fields are AND-ed together while other boolean operations are allowed within the field keywords

– Wildcards ($) are supported– Querying against multiple fields is supported by searching fields in the Advanced

Search options– Full text search is supported

• Returned results– The accuracy of the results does not seem to be consistent with the USPTO

search results. – Most search engines query the USPTO database while Google seems to have

created their own version of the USPTO database and the query is performed against that instead.

– Actual patents are in a very easy to read format.• A little help?

– Provided in the form of “Patent Search Tips”. It’s useful enough to give a user enough information to formulate a query.


Patent Hunter [5]

• Not a web based application• Not free (but it has a free trial!)


• Available search options– Basic – Advanced

• Also offers the ability to save searches and search results

Patent Hunter Basic Searchpatent search engine survey

• Strikingly similar to the USPTO quick search

Patent Hunter Advanced Search

• Very nice interface to USPTO Advanced Search


Patent Hunter Features

• Search engine search interface– Very easy to use with a low learning curve

• Supported search options– Booleans are supported for both Basic and Advanced Searches– Wildcards ($) are supported for both Basic and Advanced

Searches– Querying against multiple fields is supported– Full text search is supported

• Returned results– Results are consistent with USPTO results– To view a patent, users must right click on a patent number and

download it (PDF version)• Some help is available on how to formulate queries


Patent Hunter Results Display

Free Patents Online [6]

• This web site actually incorporates word stemming!– Uses Porter Stemming method

• Available search options– Basic (available on all pages)– Advanced

• Quick• Expert


Free Patents Online

• Basic search– Seems to be a full text search (not as well

documented as the rest of the search options)

• Advanced – Quick search – Predefined set of fields that are AND-ed

together– ORs ignored within a field’s keyword


Free Patents Online

• Advanced – Expert Search– Similar to USPTO Advanced Search

• Word Stemming– Can be turned on or off– Results can be sorted by relevancy– Example:

• Title: Invent• Word Stemming: on• Sort Order: by Relevancy


Free Patents Online

Free Patents Online Features

• Search engine search interface– Easy to use.

• Supported search options– Booleans are supported for all searches – Wildcards (*) are supported– Querying against multiple fields is supported– Full text search is supported

• Returned results– The accuracy seems to match the USPTO. Hard to get a good

feel for how accurate the stemming algorithm is.– Excellent results display. The patent display is functional.

• A little help? – Excellent help – tutorials, descriptions, etc


Ease of Parsing Patent Datapatent search engine survey

USPTO No tags

GetThePatent.com Unable to access actual patents

IP-Discover PDF or USPTO versions available

SurfIP USPTO version

Google Patent Tags!

Patent Hunter PDF version

Free Patents Online Tags!

Other Patent Search Engines

• esp@cenet [7]– European Patent Office– Worldwide search includes U.S. Patents

• IP News Flash [8]– Searches families of patents– Maintained as a hobby

• Intellectual Property Digital Library [9]– Searches patent applications

• SurfIP – Intellectual Property Office of Singapore [10]– Can specify to search only USPTO database


Summary

• Most patent search engines are interfaces to USPTO– Google obtains data and searches that data

• Many of the interfaces do not expand on USPTO functionality

• Free Patents Online – Incorporates stemming and scoring of

retrieved results as opposed to simply querying fields in the USPTO database.

– The most useful help


Conclusion – Future

• It would be interesting to see patent search engines use more Information Retrieval techniques akin to Free Patents Online’s stemming/scoring and Google’s patent information indexing

• Interfaces other than variations on the USPTO theme would be nice.


Contact Information

• Jennifer Lewis

• [email protected]

• 505-844-1351

• These slides will be available at:http://home.comcast.net/~sylvara/8337/presentation.html

through the end of May 2007.


Bibliography

1. United States Patent and Trademark Office, “Patent Full-Text and Full-Page Image Databases”, July 7,2006; http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html.

2. Cartesian Products, “GetThePatent.com - Online Patent Search Database”, April 2007; http://www.getthepatent.com/.

3. KPN Consulting, “IP-Discover Home Page”, April 2007; http://www.ipdiscover.com/.

4. Google, “Google Patent Search”, April 2007; http://www.google.com/ptshp.

5. Patent Hunter, “Patent Hunter 3.5 - Patent Downloading, Searching and Management Software”, April 2007; http://www.patentdatabase.com/.


http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html

http://www.getthepatent.com/

Bibliography (cont.)

6. Free Patents Online, “Patent Analytics and Patent Searching”, April 2007, http://www.freepatentsonline.com/.

7. European Patent Office, “esp@cenet”, April 2007; http://ep.espacenet.com/.

8. Rolf Claessen, “IP Newsflash”, April 2007, http://www.ipnewsflash.com/.

9. World Intellectual Property Organization, “Intellectual Property Digital Library”, April 2007, http://www.wipo.int/ipdl/en/.

10. Intellectual Property Office of Singapore, “SurfIP”, April 2007; http://www.surfip.com/.


Bibliography (cont.)

11. PJPatents, “Patent Search Engines”, April, 2007; http://www.patentlawlinks.com/patsearc.htm.

12. Uncle Al’s Search Engines, “Uncle Al’s Search

Engines”, July 15, 2006; http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/net2.htm.

13. Google, “Google”, April 2007; http://www.google.com/search?q=patent+search+engine.

14. Dr. Maggie Dunham, “CSE 8337 Spring 2007”, April 2007; http://engr.smu.edu/~mhd/8337sp07.html.


a survey of patent search engine software jennifer lewis april 24, 2007 cse 8337

Documents

google patent search

patent search alternative

advanced search syntax

selected search enginesanalyze

boolean query search

patent hunter

advanced searchwildcards

trademark office uspto