Scientific information services provider FIZ Karlsruhe, Germany, has developed a new search feature for STN which is said to offer not only improved identification of claims and detailed descriptions of the patent applications, but also allow for numeric property searches. FIZ Karlsruhe operates STN, an online service for research and patent information, in cooperation with Chemical Abstracts Service.
Comprehensive and current patent information is seen to be indispensable in order to avoid costly duplicate research, to protect proprietary know-how, to secure competitive advantages, and to ensure a company's innovative power. Patent databases on STN are stated to be key information resources for determining patentability, infringement and the legal status of patents.
PCTFULL, the full-text database of Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) patent applications issued under the auspices of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), contains more than 1.8 million records and more than 1.3 million images. These are predominantly drawings from the patent application front page. The file covers the time period 1978 to the present and is updated weekly.
Doing a key word search in full-text databases usually results in large answer sets with hundreds or thousands of documents. Now it is possible for the first time to limit the search, for example, to particles in the nanoscale (< 100 nm), to catalytic reactions at low temperatures (e.g., -5 to 10°C), to mixtures of a certain percentage range (e.g., 20–30%), and many more applications, according to STN.
Numeric values and their corresponding units are extracted from the English full-text, normalised and made available for numeric searching. More than 30 physical properties are indexed and searchable, most of them as base or derived SI units. Almost 400 further units and spelling variants are converted to SI units in order to encompass a wider range of retrievable values. Intervals contained in the text are also recognised.
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