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

Types of search
(L) or (P) terms are in the same field, in any order.
(L) in PATDPA, IFIPAT, CA, ENCOMPPAT, RUSSIAPAT, USPATFULL, USPAT2, USPATOLD etc.,
(P) in INPADOCDB, INPAFAMDB, PATDD, EPFULL, PATDPAFULL, PCTFULL, FRFULL, FRANCEPAT
(P) DWPI, invention level: terms are adjacent in the same section of the abstract, in any order
(L) DWPI: terms are adjacent in one segment of the publication level, in any order; at invention level (L)
proximity works as AND
(S) or (P) in full text databases terms are adjacent in the same paragraph of a field, in any order.
(S) in EPFULL, PATDPAFULL, PCTFULL, FRFULL,
(P) in USPATFULL, USPAT2, USPATOLD, IFIPAT
In the text fields, (W) is implied proximity if no other (Boolean or proximity) operator is entered. Hyphenated terms
are split at the hyphen and each part entered into the index separately. If a hyphen is entered as part of a search
then it will automatically be replaced by (W). Special characters, such as =, /, -, are considered as blanks. To avoid
confusion when searching for characters that are used in the STN command language (/, AND, OR) these must be
entered in "..." or '...'.
=> FIL PATDPAFULL
=> S A-D-WANDLER
1008914 A
997724 D
64998 WANDLER
L1 14732 A-D-WANDLER
(A(W)D(W)WANDLER)
=> S A/D-WANDLER
'D-WANDLER' IS NOT A VALID FIELD CODE
L2 0 A/D-WANDLER
=> S "A/D-WANDLER"
1008914 "A"
997724 "D"
64998 "WANDLER"
L3 14732 "A/D-WANDLER"
("A"(W)"D"(W)"WANDLER")
=> FIL EPFULL
=> S STOP AND GO
199412 STOP
86109 GO
L4 19895 STOP AND GO
=> S "STOP AND GO"
199412 "STOP"
2339900 "AND"
86109 "GO"
L5 716 "STOP AND GO"
("STOP"(W)"AND"(W)"GO")
=> S STEP AND SCAN
MISSING TERM BEFORE 'AND'
=> S "STEP AND SCAN"
623871 "STEP"
2339900 "AND"
65798 "SCAN"
L6 1174 "STEP AND SCAN"
("STEP"(W)"AND"(W)"SCAN")
During a text search it should be considered if ambiguous terms could lead to unwanted results (i.e. documents
from a different field of technology). In these cases a combined search with classification codes is particularly
advisable.
Left truncation. This is available in many databases in order to deal with compounds easily. Special care must be
taken when using combined left and right truncation (Floating Stem, the term entered must be at least 4 letters
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