Searching Basics (Must Read)

Just the stuff you wanted to know...

• In PatSeer records are not grouped by families by default. So you can search individual records and choose to collapse them by one member per Family or de-duplicate results by Application Number (i.e., by Patents and Applications). De-duplication by Application No. is particularly useful for US records when you would like to view the grant and not its corresponding application in the result. When deduplicating results by family, you can deduplicate by both Simple Family (SFAM) and Extended Family (EFAM)
• If you search for a number in Number Search it will show you all the matching kind codes as separate results. When “Show all Kind Codes” option is selected, the results can include multiple kind codes for the same publication number if they have the matched the search query. 
• The Preferred record option allows you to decide which record should be chosen while deduplicating results. For example when deduplicating results by Application Number, if you select Latest Publication Date as the preferred record, you will get the Patents in place of Applications in your results. When Deduplicating by Family you can also specify a country preference along with kind code. The kind code is optional, however. E.g. you can give US, EP, WO or with kind code USB*, USA, EPB*, WO, JPC.
• Multiple terms and phrases can be combined together with Boolean operators to form a more complex query. If all words are required then AND should be inserted between them or if Any Word is required then an OR should be inserted. To exclude a word use a NOT before it.
• The default operator assumed between multiple words is Exact Match. If you enter multiple words without any quotes then an exact match is assumed between them by default. (So if you want to combine words using AND operator, you will need to specifically mention it in your query. Further, you should also specify AND between different fields when using Command line syntax). So for example:  TAC:(carbon nanotube) IC:A61K* is incorrect and will not work.  The correct query is: TAC:(carbon nanotube) AND IC:A61K*
• Matching a phrase should be done by placing it in double quotes such as “metal gate electrode” or you can use proximity operator wd0 say (metal wd0 gate wd0 electrode). You can also use wildcard operators within a phrase search. For example "optic* fiber".
• PatSeer Search system has no stopwords. To search for words AND, OR, NOT or syntax-related words such as W, WD, WS, WP you can include them in double-quotes. There is a limit of 50 Proximity operators per search query. 
  For example: T: "system and method"
  INV: "john w"
  Using these words outside double-quote will make the system treat them as operators and not search terms.
• Use parentheses to precisely indicate in case more than one connector is present and avoid any confusion in case of complex queries. In command-line search, make sure each field’s search terms are enclosed in a bracket. A common mistake is having a query like A OR B AND C. This is an ambiguous query and could lead in different results depending upon the sub-queries/field present in A, B, C. The correct way is one of the two:  (A OR B) AND C  ,  A OR (B AND C)
• All three (left, right, and middle) truncation is supported. For performance reasons, a right truncation can only be used after a minimum of 2 characters. 
• The left truncation limit per search query has been increased from 4 to 8. So, you can now use 8 left truncations (*) in your search query when searching in Command line Search or Quick search forms.
• A total of 100 truncations can be used in a single query.
• The date syntax to use when searching is YYYY-MM-DD. You can also specify only the year and month as YYYY-MM or just the year YYYY.
• Field Searching - You can search within any field by typing the field code followed by a colon “:” and then the term you are looking for. In command-line search, if you do not specify any field then it by default searches the full text with Assignee and Inventor. Field codes are given at the end of this document.
• Proximity Search - Both left-to-right ordered and unordered proximity search is supported. The proximity operator can be applied using inline proximity characters w and wd. You can also search within the same sentence and search within the same paragraph using the operators ws and wp respectively.
   
• Examples are shown below:

IMPORTANT: Search within sentence works for all latin-text authorities. Search within paragraph however works correctly for US,EP,PCT, DE,CA and ES. It may or may not work correctly for countries with OCR’ed text such AU,FR,GB and some others)
 

• Stemming support is integrated into the search form. Stemming cannot be applied to a whole search string and instead has to be supplied on a per-word basis. To stem a word simply add # at the end of the word and it will get replaced by its stem and wildcard after that. (So stemming is nothing but a right-truncated wildcard query internally)
• Classification Searching - To search for full class please make sure you enclose it in double quotes. Ex. "G06F13/00", "234/45". To search for a portion of the class you should use a wildcard. Ex. G06F*
• Searching in Non-English Content - PatSeer has separate fields for each language. The text fields (Title, Abstract, Claims and Description) for English Language are T, A, C, D, TA, TAC, TACD. The same fields for German text are TDE, ADE, CDE, DDE, TADE, TACDE, TACDDE where DE is added to the end of the field. Similarly, the following codes can be added to search text in that language - Japanese - JA, French - FR, Korean - KR, Spanish - ES, Chinese (Simplified) - ZH, Russian - RU, Swedish - SV, Portuguese -PT, Thai-TH and All Others - OH. In case of records that do not have an English Title or Abstract, PatSeer copies an English Title or Abstract (if available) within the simple family of the record i.e., from an equivalent record. The Equivalent record from where the title or abstract is added is shown within square brackets at the end of the text.
• Searching across all Languages - To search across all languages simply use the fields T$,A$,C$,D$,TA$,TAC$,TACD$. The keywords given will be searched in text fields across all languages.
• Plural Matching – Simpler forms of plurals are automatically matched. (See section on Plural Matching for details) However, it is advisable to use wildcards yourself to have complete control of your search query.