Guide to STN Patent Databases – Basic Version - Paton - TU Ilmenau

Types of search
US patent applications and US patents (US-A, US-A1, USB1/B2) from 1975
PCT applications (WO-A1/A2) from 1978
Japanese applications (JP-A) (Machine Assisted Translations) from 1975
Australian applications (AU-A) from 2004
United Kingdom granted patents (GB-B) since 2004
Abstracts:
German patent applications, patents and utility models (DE-A1, DE-B1/B2/B3/B4, DE-C1/C2 and DE-U1)
from 2000
European applications and granted patents (EP-A1/A2, EP-B1/B2) from 1978 for applications in English,
from 2000 for applications in German or French
Claims:
US patent applications and US patents (US-A, US-A1, USB1/B2) from 1975
PCT applications (WO-A1/A2) from 1978
German patent applications, patents and utility models (DE-A1, DE-B1/B2/B3/B4, DE-C1/C2 and DE-U1)
from 1968
European applications and patents (EP-A1/A2, EP-B1/B2) from 1991 (1984 for EP-B)
US patent applications and US patents (US-A, US-A1, USB1/B2) from 1993
UK patents (GB-B, Derwent week 1984/09 to 1997/51 only)
In the Derwent Patents Citation Index only the title is available for text searching. It is recommended to do text
and subject searches in the World Patents Index and switch to the DPCI file for the citation search only.
In INPADOCDB and INPAFAMDB the title (90% of all documents have titles, extensions to the title or original titles,
TIO) and the abstract are available for searching. For most European languages it is entered in the original language,
while for some non-European languages and Russian a translation into English is made. Abstracts are entered for
publications from 42 countries since 1970, i.e. from US, GB (since 1897), WO, EP, CA, DE, FR, CN. However, abstracts
are not generally entered, but the number of the existing abstracts is considerable (> 13 million). The language of
the abstract is often English, but other languages occur. Therefore, a (multi-lingual) text or keyword search in
INPADOCDB should be made to complement, but not to restrict, a classification search.
=> E A/FA
**** START OF FIELD ****
E3 0 --> A/FA
E4 11807357 AB/FA
E5 512650 ABDE/FA
E6 101312 ABES/FA
E7 1687006 ABFR/FA
E8 263400 ABOL/FA
E9 242928 ABOR/FA
E10 52054682 AI/FA
E11 52152990 AN/FA
E12 48296890 DAV/FA
The long-term coverage may be very helpful with some search problems.
In INPAFAMDB the search indexes always cover the patent family. If two or more search terms are linked by AND the
hits may come from several publications of the patent family. If this is not wanted (L) proximity must be used (see
above).
In the Chemical Abstracts database, the title and abstract are edited by the database producer. The words of the
title, the abstract, and chemical indexing terms, including CAS Registry numbers, are searchable in the Basic Index.
Searching is also possible with left-hand truncation. Single words from the abstract are additionally searchable in a
specific /AB search field; the words of the Basic index excluding the abstract (i.e. only titles and index data) can also
be searched in the /OBI search field.
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