DECEMBER 2023

THE
PATENTSCOPE
USER’S
GUIDE
PATENTSCOPE USER’S GUIDE // DECEMBER 2023

Contents
Introduction 1

What is the PATENTSCOPE search system? 1

About this guide 1

What is the data coverage? 2

Up-to-date & detailed data coverage 3

Non-patent literature 4

Search Interfaces 8

Different languages 8

Interface languages 8

Search languages 8

Search interfaces 9

1. Simple search 9

2. Advanced Search 11

3. Field Combination 15

4. CLIR_ Cross-Lingual Information Retrieval 18

5. Chemical structure search 27

Families in PATENTSCOPE 34

Definition 34

IC Codes 35

Family Information Access 39

Group Results by Families 42

The Classifications 43

International Patent Classification 43

Cooperative Patent Classification 44

File Index Classification 45

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Contents
The Browse menu 46

Browse by week (PCT) 46

Gazette Archive 48

Sequence listing 48

National Phase Entries Full Download 49

National Entries Incremental Download (last 7 days) 49

Authority File Download Standard ST37 49

Authority File Download current year 49

Authority File Download All 49

Search Results 50

Display of the search results 50

Reading the result page 54

PCT Monitoring 56

Tools 58

WIPO Translate 58

WIPO Pearl 60

IPC Green Inventory 62

Support COVID-19 Efforts 63

Portal to Patent Registers 63

Settings 64

Navigation bar 66

Help 66

Languages 67

Login 67

Annex 70

Search syntax 70

Field codes 72
PATENTSCOPE USER’S GUIDE // DECEMBER 2023

INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS THE PATENTSCOPE SEARCH SYSTEM?

You’re a patent attorney and need to find a specific patent document…

You’re an inventor and want to see whether your latest invention has
already been patented…

You’re a researcher and are interested in seeing which technologies

have been developed in your field…

You’re an entrepreneur and want to find out who your competitors are
and what they’re up to…

The PATENTSCOPE search system just might be the right tool for you!

The PATENTSCOPE search system is the FREE OF CHARGE patent

search system provided by the World Intellectual Property Organization
(WIPO) that allows you to access millions of patent documents and non-
patent literature.

This User’s Guide will help you get to know the PATENTSCOPE search
system and learn how to get the most out of its powerful search and
analysis features.

ABOUT THIS GUIDE

The PATENTSCOPE search system is constantly improving to provide

new features and new content to its users. In fact, from the time the
writing of this guide started to the time it was completed, a few things
have changed on the interface. To keep up to date on the latest
developments and changes to the PATENTSCOPE search system, look
at: https://www.wipo.int/patentscope/en/news/

To help readability, a few conventions were used in this guide:

Web Sites URLs and email addresses are in blue in Courier; and
to refer to something that you see on the interface italics was used;
tips are indicated with

Note: Screenshots in this guide reflect what the interface was like in
December 2023; a few significant changes took place during the writing
of this guide.

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WHAT IS THE DATA COVERAGE?

PATENTSCOPE gives you access to millions of patent documents and non-patent literature,
namely:
International Patent Applications filed under the PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty)
Regional and national patent collections from numerous participating countries and
organizations, including:

Argentina Japan
ARIPO (African Regional Intellectual Property Jordan
Organization) Kazakhstan
Australia Kenya
Austria Lao People’s Democratic Republic
Bahrain Latvia
Belgium Lithuania
Brazil Malaysia
Brunei Darussalam Malta
Bulgaria Mexico
Cambodia Monaco
Canada Morocco
Chile Netherlands
China New Zealand
Colombia Nicaragua
Costa Rica Norway
Cuba Panama
Czech Republic Peru
Czechoslovakia Philippines
Denmark Poland
Dominican Republic Portugal
EAPO (Eurasian Patent Organization) Republic of Korea
Ecuador Romania
Egypt Russian Federation
El Salvador Russian Federation (USSR data)
EPO (European Patent Office) Saudi Arabia
Estonia Serbia
Finland Singapore
France Slovakia
Georgia South Africa
Germany Spain
Germany (DDR data) Sweden
Greece Switzerland
Guatemala Thailand
Honduras Tunisia
India United Arab Emirates
Indonesia United Kingdom
Israel United States of America
Italy Uruguay
Vietnam 2
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WHAT IS THE DATA COVERAGE?

Those countries share their national/regional data with WIPO; they are not the PCT applications
entering into national phase into those countries. National phase information is available here:
https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/help/national_phase_entry.jsf

Please check our website, new collections become available on a regular basis. The collections
available are listed in the Simple Search/Advanced Search/Field Combination page; click the arrow
sign next to Offices to see the list.

The Offices in Simple Search is only available for logged-in users. If you do not have a WIPO
account to login-in, please see Login section of this Guide.

UP-TO-DATE & DETAILED DATA COVERAGE

For the most up-to-date information on data coverage, please go to the Help menu, PATENTSCOPE
Help, Data coverage national collections at:
https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/help/data_coverage.jsf

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WHAT IS THE DATA COVERAGE?

NON-PATENT LITERATURE

The integration of non-patent literature (NPL) in PATENTSCOPE has open-access content from
IEEE, Nature, Wikipedia (only technology and scientific content filtered using an in-house
algorithm) and MDPI.

A new button to include the NPL in the result list is now available in:

1. The Advanced Search and the Field Combination interfaces

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WHAT IS THE DATA COVERAGE?

NON-PATENT LITERATURE

2. The result list: the refine options is available by clicking on Include NPL

All the PATENTSCOPE search features are available to perform searches in the NPL in
PATENTSCOPE.

Useful fields to search the NPL content:

Field Information retrieved

AU: Hyojin Kim author, Hyojin Kim for example, of the article
CTR:ZZ only NPL information search criteria.
DP:(30.12.2020) publication date, December 30th, 2020 for example
DTY:NPL all NPL the records
EN_AB: (electric bicycle) information in the abstract of the article, electric bicycle for example
EN_DE: (electric bicycle) information in the article, electric bicycle for example
EN_TI: (electric bicycle) information in the title of article, electric bicycle for example
IC: G06F code IPC, G06F for example (assigned by an AI procedure)
JO: (British Journal of journal of the article, for example, the British Journal of Cancer
Cancer)

PN: 10.1038/s41416-019- publication number of the article, for example: 10.1038/s41416-019-

0673-5 0673-5
PU: IEEE publisher or source of NPL, for example IEEE

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WHAT IS THE DATA COVERAGE?

NON-PATENT LITERATURE

In the Analysis in the result list, NPL information is available in the Kind code column.

If selected, the result list will include NPL information ranked by relevance together with the patent
documents that match the search performed.

An example of an NPL document:

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WHAT IS THE DATA COVERAGE?

NON-PATENT LITERATURE

The information in the NPL Biblio. Data tab is available for download for logged-in users. The link
to the source allows users to export the content.

In the Description tab, the full-text of the article is available and the Machine translation button is
available if translation is needed:

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SEARCH INTERFACES
DIFFERENT LANGUAGES

INTERFACE LANGUAGES
The search interface is available in 10 languages that can be selected in the navigation bar (white bar
on the top of the interface).

SEARCH LANGUAGES

You can search in all the filing languages of the documents contained in PATENTSCOPE, such as
Arabic, Bulgarian, Cambodian, Chinese, Danish, English, Estonian, French, German, Greek, Hebrew,
Italian, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Vietnamese, etc.

SEARCH INTERFACES
There are 5 ways to conduct a search using PATENTSCOPE Search service. Those options can be
selected from the Search menu as indicated below.

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SEARCH INTERFACES
1.SIMPLE SEARCH

The Simple Search interface is the default interface.

It offers 7 predefined search fields:

1. Front page: the search criteria you entered in this field will be searched in the front page of the
document (title, abstract, names and numbers).
2. Any field: the search criteria you entered in this field will be searched in any fields of the
document.
3. Full-text: enter your query in this field if you are interested in full-text.
4. ID/Number: enter publication number, filing number, etc.
5. IPC: enter any International Patent Classification code.
6. Names: enter your search in this field to look for the name of an inventor, an applicant, a
company, etc.
7. Publication Date: enter a date here to search for specific publication dates.

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SEARCH INTERFACES
1.SIMPLE SEARCH

You can use the Simple Search interface to search for:

a specific number: a reference to patent document in the press, in a trial, etc.

an individual, an inventor, an applicant, etc.
a company whether it is for personal interest, for merging and/or acquisition purposes or to
keep track of the work of a competitor
an IPC code
a specific publication date
a subject matter expressed with simple keywords, a concept that is very specific in order to
have a limited number of results

Use the Browse by week option under the Browse menu to see all international applications
published during a given week.

Click the Query Examples to be provided with search examples. If you click on those
examples, they will automatically appear in the search box. They give you good examples of
the kind of searches that can be performed in the Simple Search interface:

To use the Simple Search interface:

1. Select one of the 7 available search fields from the drop-down menu;
2. Enter your search terms into the selected field;
3. Click the button

To look for a specific patent document number, use the ID/Number field.
To look for any information related to a name (inventor, agent, etc.), use the Names field.

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SEARCH INTERFACES
2.ADVANCED SEARCH

The Advanced Search is the PATENTSCOPE expert search interface that can be used to create
complex search queries using an unlimited number of terms.

The PATENTSCOPE search service offers a wide range of operators that can be used to combine
search terms, including Boolean operators, proximity operators, and range operators. Using these
operators will allow you to customize your results.

You can also use wildcards:

50 wildcards/query max
10 wildcards/individual fields (EN_ALLTXT for example) except:
EN_ALL, FR_ALL, DE_AL … 3 wildcards max
FR_ALLTXT, DE_ALLTXT… 5 wildcards max
2 wildcards/phrase max (EN_TI:“elec* car* veh*”)
No leading wildcard (EN_TI:“*elec”)

For more information about operators available in the PATENTSCOPE search service, look at:
https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/help/querySyntaxHelp.jsf
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SEARCH INTERFACES
2.ADVANCED SEARCH

The Advanced Search interface uses field codes to define the fields in which search terms must be
found.

More information about field codes can be found at Annex 2 of this guide or at this link:
https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/help/fieldHelp.jsf

Some examples of the use of the Advanced Search:

1. Searching for inventions made by Steve Jobs published during the period from 2007 to 2009
comprising the keyword “touch” in the description.

IN:(Jobs) AND DP:[2007 TO 2009] AND EN_DE:(touch)

This search query uses field codes, a Boolean operator, and a range operator.

The field codes are IN for inventor, DP for publication date, and EN_DE for English description.

The Boolean operator AND is used to ensure that all search terms are included in the search results
(i.e. that the results are for Jobs as inventor, within the given publication date range, and using the
word “touch”).

The range operator TO is used to define a range of publication date values.

2. Searching for inventions related to cutting tree trunks:

cutting AND trunk

This search query will retrieve over 10,000 results, many of which are not related to cutting tree
trunks.

cutting NEAR5 trunk

This search query retrieves a few hundred results; most of which are related to the wood industry.
It uses a proximity operator NEAR to ensure that the two terms are close to each other in your
results and specifies that they must be within 5 words of each other by defining the value as NEAR5.
Similarly, you could specify that the terms must be within any other number of words of each
other, e.g. NEAR4, NEAR100.

3. Searching for surgical instruments that are referred to before the paragraph “Field of the
invention”:

“Field of the invention” BEFORE100 “surgical instruments”

The operator BEFORE allows users to define the part of the document the search should be carried
out: only documents containing surgical instruments positioned 100 words after “Field of the
invention” will be retrieved.
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SEARCH INTERFACES
2.ADVANCED SEARCH

To use the Advanced Search interface:

2
3
4
5
6

1. Enter keywords/Boolean expression/field codes etc. Please read the Annex section of this guide
or go to the Help menu on the search interface for a complete list of Boolean expressions and
Fields Definition;
2. Select the collection(s) you are interested in using the arrow;
3. Select the language in which you would like to perform the search using the arrow;
4. Stemming is on by default. It is a process that removes ending in order to find keywords with
common roots such as electric, electricity, electrical. The stemmer is related to the language of
the search, in this example, it is therefore the English stemmer.
5. Tick this box if you would like to have family information in your result list. Please read the
section in this Guide about families in PATENTSCOPE.
6. Tick this box if you would like to have non-patent literature information in your result list.
Please read the section in this Guide about non-patent literature in PATENTSCOPE.

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SEARCH INTERFACES
2.ADVANCED SEARCH

EXPAND WITH RELATED TERMS

This feature allows you to expand your query with synonyms that are automatically provided by
PATENTSCOPE.

Enter your query in the query box and click the Expand with related terms button.

Then click the Expanded Search button to run your search.

Click the Query Examples to be provided with search examples. If you click on those
examples, they will automatically appear in the search box.

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SEARCH INTERFACES
3.FIELD COMBINATION

The Field Combination interface can be used to structure a more targeted search using specific
search criteria in any search fields (e.g., title, abstract, description, etc.) can be performed using this
interface.

The Field Combination Search, a list of preset search fields that can be combined according to the
users’ needs, should be used to search together different concepts such as:

a date and an inventor

an inventor and a company,
etc.

Any combination of the preset search fields available in the Field Combination Search is possible.

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SEARCH INTERFACES
3.FIELD COMBINATION

Some examples of the use of the Field Combination:

Searching for the inventions filed by Shimano in 2017.

In the drop-down box, select the field Applicant Name and enter Shimano; select AND and the field
Publication date and enter 2017.

Searching for applications containing microchip with licensing availability.

In the drop-down box, select English Claims and enter microchip, then tick the Licensing
availability box (the last row in the Field Combination interface).

Searching for missing information using the empty field option.

For example, you can search applications without any IPC code. In the row before last, select the
IPC in the drop-down box and tick yes next to empty.

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SEARCH INTERFACES
3.FIELD COMBINATION

1
2

3
4
5
6
7
8
9

To use the Field Combination interface:

1. Select the field(s) of interest using the arrow of the drop-down menu;
2. Use the AND/OR boxes to add or include fields;
3. If you would like to add more fields or remove one or more fields, please click the + or – signs;
4. Select the collection/s you are interested in the drop-down menu;
5. Select the language in which you would like to perform the search in the drop-down;
6. Stemming is on by default. It is a process that removing ending in order to find keywords with
common roots such as electric, electricity, electrical. The stemmer is related to the language of
the search, in this example, it is therefore the English stemmer;
7. Tick this box if you would like to have family information in your result list. Please read the
section in this Guide about the families;
8. Tick this box if you would like to have non-patent literature in your result list. Please read the
section in this Guide about non-patent literature;
9. At the bottom of the search page, the number of results are indicated, allowing therefor to
amend the query is necessary.

From the result page, to go back to Field Combination with your search criteria, go to the
Search menu and select Field Combination.

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SEARCH INTERFACES
4.CLIR (CROSS-LINGUAL INFORMATION RETRIEVAL)

CLIR stands for Cross Lingual Information Retrieval. This tool allows you to expand your search by
including patent documents in your result list that were disclosed in a foreign language: for
example, you enter one keyword in English, your result list will include that keyword in English
and its synonyms as well as the translation of both the keyword and the synonyms into 13
languages. The tool first finds synonym of your query and then translate everything into 13
languages. The following languages are available:

Chinese
Danish
Dutch
English
French
German
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish

Just enter one or more terms in one of those languages in the search box and the system will suggest
variants and translate the term(s), thus allowing you to search patent documents disclosed in all of
these languages.

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SEARCH INTERFACES
4.CLIR (CROSS-LINGUAL INFORMATION RETRIEVAL)

2 3 4

To use the CLIR interface:

1. Enter the search query in the search box. Up to 5 keywords can be entered and “…” are
supported.
2. Select the language of your query.
3. Select the Expansion mode:
Automatic will generate the results immediately without any further user input.
Supervised will allow you to select the technical domain associated with your query and the
variants relevant to your query.
4. Select the level of precision. If you favor precision, an expanded query will be built in order to
retrieve only the most relevant results at the risk of missing some results. If you favor recall, an
expanded query will be built in order to retrieve more results at the possible expense of
accuracy.
Precision is defined as the proportion of relevant documents in the set of all documents
returned by a search query. Precision is a measure of exactness.
Recall is defined as the number of relevant documents retrieved as fraction of all relevant
documents. Recall is a measure of completeness.
5. Click the Search (automatic mode) or Select Domains (supervised mode) button.

AUTOMATIC MODE

After entering your query, select the query language, the expansion mode, define the level of
precision and click the search button:

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4.CLIR (CROSS-LINGUAL INFORMATION RETRIEVAL)

The result list will be displayed with the new query containing synonms and translations of your
query:

SUPERVISED MODE (4 steps)

Step 1: enter your query, select the query language, the expansion mode, define the level of
precision and click the Select Domains button:

Step 2: Select the technical domain(s):

The PATENTSCOPE search system will propose a list of domains to which the keywords you
entered in the first step could belong. You can edit the proposals by:

removing the technical domains that are not relevant with just one click on the cross next to
the domain;
selecting relevant domains in the drop-down menu. (see next page)

Up to 5 domains can be selected.

Then click the Expand Synonyms button.

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4.CLIR (CROSS-LINGUAL INFORMATION RETRIEVAL)

Step 3: Select the variants relevant to your query

The system will suggest variants for the terms of your initial query. Variants are proposed for each
term of your query click the term button to check the proposals for all the terms. Select the
checkboxes next to the variants relevant to your query. If you know a variant that is not in the
proposed list, click on Add variant button, enter the variant in the box and select the relevant
domain.

Please note that is necessary to check if each displayed variant applies otherwise you might have
incomplete results.

Click on Translate Selected Terms. 21

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SEARCH INTERFACES
4.CLIR (CROSS-LINGUAL INFORMATION RETRIEVAL)

Step 4: Check the proposed translations and define the fields in which the search should be
performed.

2 3 4
5

1. Check the translated terms by going in each tab. The remove translation button will remove
language that the user is not interested in
2. Define the fields where the search will be performed. We recommend using title and abstract
because it is fast. If you are not satisfied with the amount of results, add then first claims and
finally description to the scope of your query to try to find more results.
3. Define the distance between the words. We recommend using the unconstrained option when
searching titles and abstracts. If you search description or claims, we recommend using the
sentence or paragraph distance to make sure the concepts you search appear close to one
another in the text of the returned results.
4. Untick the Stemming option if you would like to have results including only the exact term of
your search. Stemming uses the root form of the word, for example if you search “swim”, the
results will include swimming, swimmers etc.
5. Click on Submit Query. Results will be retrieved from the PATENTSCOPE search service and
results will be displayed.

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SEARCH INTERFACES
5.CHEMICAL STRUCTURE SEARCH

Available from the Search menu, for logged-in users, the chemical structure search allows users to
search for chemical information in PATENTSCOPE

If you do not have a WIPO account to login-in, please see Login section of this Guide menu.

There are three options to perform a search.

CONVERT STRUCTURE TAB

Convert a structure allows users to select the input type of the search such as the name of the
chemical compound.

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SEARCH INTERFACES
5.CHEMICAL STRUCTURE SEARCH

Different option to enter your search are available: name of the chemical compound such as trivial
name, commercial name, IUPAC name or CAS name, the International Nonproprietary Name (INN)
InchI, InchIkeys or SMILES.

You can submit your query directly or check the structure using the show in editor. This button will
process the input data to convert the compound name, INN, InchI or SMILES into the
corresponding structure.

STRUCTURE EDITOR TAB

Structure editor allows users to draw or edit a structure. Chemical structures, reactions and
fragments can be drawn in a very intuitive way using the symbols familiar from chemical sketches
on paper.

To save a chemical structure that you drew in the Editor use the download button available below
the drawing pad to download the mol file.

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5.CHEMICAL STRUCTURE SEARCH

Save the file and to upload the structure again, use the upload structure tab and select the file in
question.

UPLOAD STRUCTURE TAB

Upload a structure allows users to upload a chemical description file in a supported format; for
example: MOL, SMILES as well as a bitmap representation of the chemical compound such as png,
gif, tiff, jpeg format. The Search for scaffold button will enlarge the search as the compound will be
searched more generally, taking into consideration only the 1st part of the InchIKey. The scaffold is
Basic skeleton of a molecule to which further groups and moieties are attached Structure editor tab

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5.CHEMICAL STRUCTURE SEARCH

SUBSTRUCTURE SEARCH TAB

Additionally to the Exact Structure Search, the functionality to search substructures within
chemical compounds is now also available. The Substructure Search can be submitted from the
Structure editor.

After a substructure search has been launched, a list of structures containing the query molecule
will be returned (ordered as a grid). The matching substructure is shown highlighted (blue color) by
each molecule hit.

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5.CHEMICAL STRUCTURE SEARCH

You can select one or several structures before submitting the search by clicking on the checkboxes
or you can select (or deselect) all the chemical compounds on the page clicking the buttons Select all
(or Clear all).

A maximum of 1024 chemical compounds can be selected for the search of the patents. If selection
contains more than 1024 chemical compounds, a message will be displayed as shown in Error!
Reference source not found.

If the substructure search takes longer than 4 sec., a link with the label Show more will appear on
the last page indicating that the substructure search is not completed (s. Error! Reference source not
found.). This information may also be inferred by the percentage of the result list at the top of the
substructure list.

MARKUSH SEARCH IN PATENTSCOPE

Markush searching refers to finding an exact structure or a substructure or a fuzzy structure of

interest in documents with a range of chemical structures defined by a Markush structure.

Within the PATENTSCOPE system there are two ways of carrying out a Markush search.

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5.CHEMICAL STRUCTURE SEARCH

1.Firstly, in order to enable a rapid search within structures contained in documents defined by a
Markush formula, these Markush structures have been enumerated and the relevant document
annotated with the respective InchiKeys in the same way as for the normal chemical structures in
PATENTSCOPE documents which have been identified as chemical related.

This function is available in the Chemical Compounds Search opening page by selecting the Include
enumerated Markush structures function and by clicking on the Exact Structure Search button:

The results are displayed as follows:

Note the new PATENTSCOPE search field ENUM that is used to index the enumerated InchiKeys.

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5.CHEMICAL STRUCTURE SEARCH

The advantages of the Markush search by enumerations are:

1. Simplicity: you only need to tick a box to search Markush Formulae

2. Response times: the search is executed in a matter of seconds
3. Full power of combination with all other PATENTSCOPE fields using Boolean logic: for
example if you want to search cimetidine in Markush structures but only documents
concerning Mandelson syndrome, you could use the search query: “ENUM:
(AQIXAKUUQRKLND-UHFFFAOYSA-N) AND EN_DE:Mandelson”

The disadvantages are:

1. Reduced recall: the Markush enumeration algorithm enumerates each Markush formula to a
maximum number of 500 Inchikeys, starting with the simpler structures that match the
Markush definition. The more complicated structures will not be retrieved.
2. Only exact compound searches can be conducted

2. Secondly, another more elaborate search is available from the structure editor page. To arrive at
this page when you are using a name, or chemical formula as your input, firstly, type in your search
term and then click the Show in editor button as shown below:

In this case the search term is lansoprazole and when the structure editor opens you need to scroll
down to beneath the structure window and a tab with the option of Markush Search is visible
which gives the option of two different search types, see below:

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5.CHEMICAL STRUCTURE SEARCH

This search uses a manually-curated database where the structures are represented as chemical
MOL files and the search uses a complex chemical matching algorithm.

You can specify the matching algorithm you want to be applied between your search structure and
the Markush formulae indexed in the system:

exact match
substructure match

This more complex search technique takes longer and once the first illustrative results are displayed
there is the option of a batch search in which your search will carry on in the background and your
results will be available in your PATENTSCOPE account a while later.

Clicking on the show more link allows to search interactively for more matches for one more
minute and the percentage of the indexed Markush structures that have been searched so far
increases accordingly:

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5.CHEMICAL STRUCTURE SEARCH

Markush structures are identified by their unique number, attributed by Clarivate Analytics (Here:
9117-08201, 9138-09401,…)

When you are satisfied with the found Markush structures (or have searched them all), the next step
is to search for the corresponding patent documents. This is done by selecting the displayed
Markush structures of interest up to a maximum of one thousand (you can click on the select all
button if applicable) and then click on the Search button.

And finally you get the PATENTSCOPE results list:

The MN search field also allows you to search directly if you already have one or more Clarivate
Markush numbers to search.

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SEARCH INTERFACES
5.CHEMICAL STRUCTURE SEARCH

Please note:

1. The search by matching structures implemented in PATENTSCOPE has a limitation in the sense
that all repeating groups in the indexed Markush structures are standardized to one repetition
ie. in a chemical structure with –(CH2)n- only n=1 will be found. As a consequence, you may
need to manually edit your searched structures if it contains similar repeating groups.
2. There is the capacity to define variable groups for your searched structure in the structure
editor. This is achieved by using the pre-defined groups to change an atom properties by firstly
drawing a skeleton, selecting the atom properties where you wish to place the pre-defined
group using the highlighted button in the image below, selecting the query atom button where
you have the choice of pre-defined groups to take the place of the selected atom:

Markush searching using the matching algorithms has the following advantages:

Recall: all structures matching a given Markush structure can be searched (not only the 500
simplest ones as for the enumerated structures)
Richness of what to search: Markush structures can not only be searched for exact compounds
but also for compounds with specified variable groups
Richness of how to search: three levels of matching algorithms are provided with increasing
recall and decreasing precision: exact, substructure, fuzzy substructure which automatically
introduces the variable groups as above in the query atom tab

And the following disadvantages:

Very long response times
Repeating groups not supported
Complexity: chemical knowledge required to select the found Markush structures of interest

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SEARCH INTERFACES
5.CHEMICAL STRUCTURE SEARCH

To conclude, when viewing the search result record details of a patent document, a new tab has
been defined to display the associated Markush structures and enumerations:

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FAMILIES IN PATENTSCOPE
DEFINITION

PATENTSCOPE Patent Families denominate the grouping of different publications of the same
invention by different authorities.

The PATENTSCOPE Patent Families include patent documents via the PCT route and the Paris
route.

The PCT families are a subset of the PATENTSCOPE Patent Families. They include:

A PCT patent application (IC1);

Its national entries either
reported as national entries by the participating offices prior to their publication (IC2 or IC3)
or
after publication as part of the of the bibliographic data, International Convention data other
than Paris Convention (IC2); and
Its priority application if first and only priority (IC5);

The PCT families can further by enriched by adding:

US related documents of US patents already part of the PCT family such as the divisionals,
continuations, reissues and republications of those publications. Continuations in part are not
included; and finally
Any applications that have not followed the PCT route but share the same priorities as the
members of the PCT family.

Further to this, the Paris route subset of the PATENTSCOPE Patent Families include:

1. All applications that share the same priorities and where there is no PCT application sharing
those priorities (IC4); and
2. US related documents of the US patents already part of the PCT family such as the divisionals,
continuations, reissues and republications of those publications. Continuations in part are not
included (IC6);
3. The priority application if first and only priority;
4. National application related to another application of the same office already included in the
family, such as divisionals, continuations, republications etc.

The IC (Inclusion Criteria) codes indicate which of the criteria listed above was first met and used to
include the invention in the family. This does not mean that the criteria listed next to the invention
it is the only criteria met. A national entry for example that is denoted as IC2 meets also IC4 because
it shares the priorities with the PCT application and the other IC2 applications. This information
can be found below the application date in the family tab of the patent document:

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FAMILIES IN PATENTSCOPE
DEFINITION

IC CODES

Codes Definition

IC1 A published PCT application from which family originated

A national entry of the published PCT application in PATENTSCOPE. If not visible

IC2
in National Phase tab, taken from bibliographic data of national document

IC3 A national entry of the published PCT application not available in PATENTSCOPE

IC4 US application related to one of the other US application/s

IC5 Application is the only priority of the applications of this family

IC6 Connected by priority field

National application related to another application of the same national office

IC7
already included in the family

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FAMILIES IN PATENTSCOPE
IC CODES

When hovering the cursor over the code, a window will pop up with the definition of the code in
question:

IC1: Published PCT application = origin of the family + information in the National Phase tab

IC2: National entry of a published PCT application:

Visible in the National Phase tab; or
If not visible in the National Phase tab, relationship to the PCT is built from the regional
filling or publication information of the bibliographic data

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FAMILIES IN PATENTSCOPE
IC CODES

Example of information available in the National Phase tab of PATENTSCOPE:

Example of information taken from the bibliographic data:

For the Indian documents, the “prior PCT field” in the bibliographic data was used. This “Prior PCT
field” is a field not shown in the PATENTSCOPE interface. This information is available in the
database provided by the offices and which complements the national phase information.

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FAMILIES IN PATENTSCOPE
IC CODES
IC3: National entry of a published PCT application not found in PATENTSCOPE

The patent document in question is not available in PATENTSCOPE because the application entered
the national phase in the relevant office but was not published yet at the time of the creation of the
document.

IC4: US application related to one of the US applications already included in the family as either
a divisional, continuation, reissue or republication. Continuations-in-part are not included.

The relationship between the members of the family can be viewed in the Description tab or in the
XML available in the Documents tab:

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FAMILIES IN PATENTSCOPE
FAMILY INFORMATION ACCESS
Example of the XML available in the Documents tab in PATENTSCOPE:

IC5: the application that is the sole priority of all members in the family

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FAMILIES IN PATENTSCOPE
FAMILY INFORMATION ACCESS
IC6: applications included in the family based on matching priorities

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FAMILIES IN PATENTSCOPE
FAMILY INFORMATION ACCESS
IC7: a national application related to another application of the same national office already
included in the family. It indicates the relationships such as divisionals, republications, reissues
etc. It can be considered as the equivalent of IC4 for other national offices than the USPTO.

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FAMILIES IN PATENTSCOPE
GROUP RESULTS BY FAMILIES
To use the Single Family Member option, go to:

1) The result list (also when using the Simple search interface) to select the option Single Family
Member to open the Refine Options:

2) The Advanced Search offers the option to select the Single Family Member option before the
search:

3) The Field Combination offers the option to select families before the search:

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THE CLASSIFICATIONS
INTERNATIONAL PATENT CLASSIFICATION

The International Patent Classification (IPC), established by the Strasbourg Agreement 1971,
provides for a hierarchical system of language independent symbols for the classification of patents
and utility models according to the different areas of technology to which they pertain. A new
version of the IPC enters into force each year on January 1.

SEARCH FIELDS

1. The IC field searches International patent classifications. It will look for subgroups, both
hierarchically and lexically.

For example,
searching for A61M16/10 finds the subgroups A61M16/10...A61M16/18
searching for A61M16/00 finds the subgroups A61M16/00...A61M16/22

The valid formats for an IPC code search are the following:

IC:A61M
IC:A61M16 this is equivalent to: IC:"A61M 16"
IC:A61M16/00 this is equivalent to: IC:"A61M 16/00" or IC:A61M-16/00

Important: You don't have to enter *(wildcard) to find subgroups, they are automatically included.

2. For an exact IPC code search you need to use the IC_EX.
IC_EX:A61M16/00 this is equivalent to: IC_EX:"A61M 16/00" or IC_EX:A61M16/00

You may use a *(wildcard) with the IC_EX field to include similar subgroups.
IC_EX:A61M*
IC_EX:A61M16*

Here is the bridge between them IC:A61M16/00 = IC_EX:A61M16*. In practice IC_EX:A61M16* >
IC:A61M16/00. On the other hand IC:A61M16/10 > IC_EX:A61M10*

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THE CLASSIFICATIONS
COOPERATIVE PATENT CLASSIFICATION

The Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) system, in force as of 1 January 2013, is a bilateral
system that jointly developed by the EPO and the USPTO. It combines the best classification
practices of the two offices.

In PATENTSCOPE, the CPC values are imported from DocDB and national offices as follows:

59 National offices+PCT: gathered regularly from DocDb and the national offices. PATENTSCPE
contains, at the time of writing this Guide, more than 290 million of CPC entries, which
correspond to more than 51 million of distinct filings.
Daily updates

N. of distinct filings classified

IP5
under CPC classification

US 11,538,100

CN 8,875,231

JP 5,337,705

EP 3,777,520

KR 2,058,568

CPC statistics as of February 2020

SEARCH FIELDS

2 search fields are available: CPC, Classif. bClassif is the combination of CPC and IPC.

In the example below, the query: CPC:(Y02A*) returns 1,1121,420 results, which are grouped by
family.

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THE CLASSIFICATIONS
COOPERATIVE PATENT CLASSIFICATION

To search for CPC information, go to the Field Combination and select All Classifications
(combination of IPC and CPC) from the drop-down menus.

Those fields can also be found in the Advanced Search: just start typing class and the matching
fields will appear below:

FILE INDEX CLASSIFICATION

The File Index Classification (FI) is Japanese classification systems which enables efficient search of
patent documents. It is also noted that FI is based on IPC (International Patent Classification).

In PATENTSCOPE, the available search field is FICLASSIF.

For example, FICLASSIF:("G09G*").

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THE BROWSE MENU

BROWSE BY WEEK (PCT)

WIPO publishes new PCT applications every week on Thursday.

Selecting Browse by week gives access to a list of PCT applications by publication week.

Use the arrow of the drop-down menu to select a PCT publication week.

The result list can be downloaded using the Excel download button and IPC statistics can be
accessed:

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THE BROWSE MENU

BROWSE BY WEEK (PCT)

IPC statistics available in PATENTSOCPE provide a picture of the global trends in PCT applications.
For example, it can show who the main and/or new main actors are etc. It takes into account
applications that have IPC codes. Out of 3000 published applications, about 100 do not have any
IPC code.

∑
The column Last 5 gazettes shows the number of occurrences of a code in the last 5 gazettes.
∆
The column Last gazette shows the increase/decrease in the last gazette.
Breakout: a major difference in the use of a code in the last 5 gazettes.

Each column is sortable. A tooltip pops up on the individual gazette columns to indicate the delta
with the previous week.

You can select more than one code to be display in the graphic at the bottom of the page that
displays the values for the last 13 weeks (3 month).

There is the Chart option to have the information in a graph format.

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THE BROWSE MENU

GAZETTE ARCHIVE

In the Gazette Archive, you will find searchable official lists of all published PCT applications since
1978. View includes details about each document in the publication selected.

SEQUENCE LISTING

Sequence Listing gives access to the lists of nucleotide and or amino acid sequence listings
contained in published PCT applications. Use the 2 drop-down menus shown below to select the
year and publication week.

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THE BROWSE MENU

NATIONAL PHASE ENTRIES FULL DOWNLOAD
Here you can download all the national phase entries available at the time of the download.

NATIONAL ENTRIES INCREMENTAL DOWNLOAD (LAST 7 DAYS)

Here you can download the national phase entries of the last 7 days.

AUTHORITY FILE DOWNLOAD STANDARD ST37

Download the official PCT applications of the current year.

AUTHORITY FILE DOWNLOAD CURRENT YEAR

Download option of the official PCT publications of the current year.

AUTHORITY FILE DOWNLOAD ALL

Download option of all the official PCT publications since 1978.

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SEARCH RESULTS
DISPLAY OF THE SEARCH RESULTS
The search query, whether you performed a Simple; Advanced; Field Combination, CLIR or
Chemical Compounds search, will return a list of results in a window as shown below.

It provides bibliographic data with search terms highlighted and allows accessing of detailed
records by clicking on publication number and title.

The first component of this window:

A
H I J K

E
B C D F G

A: Refine Search button allows you to refine your search

B: Sort result button: by relevance or other criteria

B D

C: Define the number of results per page: The list length option allows you to increase the
number of displayed results per page (10 by default) to up to 200
D: Select the preferred display of the results

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SEARCH RESULTS
DISPLAY OF THE SEARCH RESULTS
The view option allows you to select the components displayed in the result list: simple, double, all,
all+image, image and multi-columns.

- Simple displays only the number, the title, the collection and the publication date;
- Double the simple display and the applicant and inventor names, the IPC code;
- Image will display only images;
- Multi-columns will display the different language version of the abstract available, Images can be
also made visible for example

E: Buttons to move through the result list

F: Download button to download the result list (for logged-in users)

F G

G: Machine translation button to translate the result page in different languages

H: RSS feed for the search query to monitor patenting activity and updates in area of interest. In
order to create an RSS page that can be used in an RSS feed reader, users will have first log in to
their WIPO account, run their queries and save them, making sure that the private query box is
unticked. In the saved queries, the RSS button will be available.
I: Query tree shows the breakdown of the results

J: Save query button for logged-in users

K: Side-by-side view: displays the result list next to one document opened

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SEARCH RESULTS
DISPLAY OF THE SEARCH RESULTS

The graph button gives access to statistics.

Filters show the statistics in a table format;

Charts show the same information in a graph format, either bar or pie;
Timeseries show the statistics over time.

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SEARCH RESULTS
DISPLAY OF THE SEARCH RESULTS

The charts can be saved in GIF format for inclusion in documents or reports by right
clicking in a corner of the image and selecting Copy image or Save image.

The filters and number of items can be customized in the Settings menu, in the Result tab.

Click on Offices or Languages or Stemming or Single Family Member or Include NPL to open Refine
Options to define the collections (Offices); Language (of search); Stemming active or inactive, the
grouping of the results by family and the inclusion of non-patent literature in the result list:

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SEARCH RESULTS
READING THE RESULT PAGE

THE TABS

Refers generally to the various data appearing on the front page of a patent
document or the corresponding applications and may comprise document
identification data, domestic filing data, priority data, publication data,
classification data, and other concise data relating to the technical content of
the document

Clear and concise explanation of known existing technologies related to the

new invention and explanation of how this invention could be applied to
solve problems not addressed by the existing technologies; specific
embodiments of the new technology are also usually given. Integrated
machine translation tools allow translation of the document.

Legal definition of the subject matter which the applicant regards as his
invention and for which protection is sought or granted; each claim is a
single sentence in a legalistic form that defines an invention and its unique
technical features; claims must be clear and concise and fully supported by
the description. Integrated machine translation tools allow translation of the
document.

gives direct access to the drawings of a patent document

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SEARCH RESULTS
READING THE RESULT PAGE

gives access to the ISR/WOSA/Article 17(2)

Where information is displayed for an office, this indicates that the applicant
has requested national phase processing for the application concerned in
that office. The national entry date and national reference number are
supplied by the national office concerned and can be used to retrieve further
details from that office, if desired. A list of national patent offices supplying
national phase information can be found here:
https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/nationalphase.jsf.

family member information and timeline

notifications of changes after publication

This service provides access to published PCT international applications and

to the latest bibliographic data and documents contained in the files of PCT
international applications. Due to changes in the PCT Regulations and to the
availability of documents in electronic form, the information available is
different depending on the date of filing of the international application.
WIPO bears no responsibility for the content of PCT international
applications and related documents. The bibliographic data and documents
are updated daily and publication of new applications is updated weekly on
publication day, i.e., Thursday, unless the International Bureau is closed for a
public holiday in which case data is published on Friday.

In the Settings menu, in the Result tab, the enable multi document download
can be activated for logged-in users in order to download one or more
documents.

will show the compounds and their location within the patent document

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SEARCH RESULTS
PCT MONITORING

PCT monitoring feature aims to monitor changes of published PCT applications.

To use it, click the start watching button available in the PCT Biblio. Data tab for PCT applications.

Then go to your WIPO account and click the watched applications.

Here you will find the list of the published PCT applications that you are currently monitoring. The
maximum number of applications that can be monitored is 20.

If changes occurred in one or more applications, since your last log-in, the application or
applications in question will be highlighted. When you are watching one or more applications, each
time you open a session, you will have to go to this page, otherwise the potential new highlighting
will be gone when you open the next session.

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SEARCH RESULTS
PCT MONITORING

Change information includes new documents, national phase information, bibliographic updates
and last republication.

Click the trash button to remove the application from the watched list.

Click the magnifying glass button to access the application.

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TOOLS

WIPO TRANSLATE
This translation tool is available for the translation of patent texts. Developed and trained internally
on bilingual patent corpuses, it incorporates neural machine translation technology. It takes into
account 32 technical domains derived from the IPC:

18 language combinations are available:

English-Chinese Chinese-English
English-French French-English
English-German German-English
English-Italian Italian - English
English-Japanese Japanese-English
English-Korean Korean-English
English-Russian Russian-English
English-Spanish Spanish-English

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TOOLS
WIPO TRANSLATE

B
C

To use this tool:

A: Enter your text in the Text to be translated box;

B: Select the Language pair. The system will automatically detect the language pair to be used if
you do not select an option;
C. Select the Domain. The system will automatically detect the domain if you do not select an
option;
D: Click the Translate button.

The result will appear as shown below:

The tool splits the text into different segments, highlighted in red. For each segment, it suggests
alternative translations. The user can also edit the proposed translations.
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TOOLS
WIPO PEARL

WIPO’s multilingual terminology portal gives access to scientific and technical terms derived from
patent documents. It helps promote accurate and consistent use of terms across different languages,
and makes it easier to search and share scientific and technical knowledge.

KEY FEATURES

Developed by WIPO language experts and terminologists.

10 languages – Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian
and Spanish.
All the content has been validated and given a term reliability score.
If there is no equivalent in the target language in the database, WIPO’s machine translation
engine may offer you a translation proposal.
Integrated with PATENTSCOPE so you can search the entire PATENTSCOPE corpus for terms
and their equivalents in other languages.

LINGUISTIC SEARCH
Search by term, with optional parameters. Select a Source Language for best results, and disable ad-
blocking plug-ins.

More information on how to use it available here:

https://www.wipo.int/reference/en/wipopearl/guide.html

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TOOLS
WIPO PEARL

CONCEPT MAP SEARCH

Search by concept, or by subject field/subfield by clicking on the bubbles; click on a concept to

open the terminology record. Select a second concept to view the concept path, and click on the
Export concept path button to perform a combined keyword search in.

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TOOLS
IPC GREEN INVENTORY

The IPC Green Inventory attempts to collect Environmentally Sound Technologies (ESTs as listed
by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)) in one place as they
are currently scattered widely across the IPC in numerous technical fields.

ESTs are presented in a hierarchical structure (A). For each technology, the links in the IPC column
direct the user to the corresponding place in the scheme.The links in the PATENTSCOPE column (B)
allow the user to automatically search and display all international patent applications available
through PATENTSCOPE that are classified in the relevant IPC place.

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TOOLS
SUPPORT COVID-19 EFFORTS

This search functionality aims to facilitate the location and retrieval of information contained in
published patent documents that may be useful for innovators developing new technologies to fight
the COVID-19 pandemic. It provides an easily accessible source of intelligence for improving the
detection, prevention, and treatment of diseases such as the novel coronavirus.

PORTAL TO PATENT REGISTERS

The portal aims to facilitate the verification of legal status of patents and related SPCs by compiling
relevant information of national registers of various jurisdictions, e.g. availability of online access to
a national or regional register.

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SETTINGS

The Query tab: Define the defaults for query language, the stemming option, the sorting of the
results and the number of results to be included in the list.

The Office tab: Select the patent collection(s) for your patent searches.

The Result tab: Define the defaults for the language of the result list, the fields that will be
displayed, the presentation of the results analysis, the groups to be included in the results
analysis and the number of items in those groups. It also gives access to the document
downloading option.

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SETTINGS
The Download tab: to enable the downloading of multiple documents, as well as to select the
downloaded fields for the report.

The Interface tab: Select the default search interface and enable Google Translate. You can also
select whether to activate Tooltip Help, Advanced Search Instant Help and IPC Help through
this tab.

The Others tab allows you to subscribe to notifications.

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NAVIGATION BAR

In the Navigation bar, you will find:

The Help menu

The language of your interface
The login menu
The WIPO button to access the WIPO website

HELP

In the Help menu, are available:

the latest news about PATENTSCOPE are posted

guides on how to search, query syntax , field definition and country codes
the data coverage
the terms and conditions as well as the disclaimer

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NAVIGATION BAR
LANGUAGES

The language of the interface can be selected from the drop-down menu English;

LOGIN

ACCOUNT SIGN UP

Provide the mandatory information (*) in order to create your free-of-charge PATENTSCOPE
account.

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NAVIGATION BAR
LOGIN

LOGIN

Once logged into the WIPO account, new icons will be available in the refine search box that will
allow users to:

Save their queries :

After clicking this icon (in the red rectangle above), users will be asked to give a name to their query
in this dialog box.

By default, your saved queries are Private that means that only you, when logged-in, can see them.
You cannot share them or subscribe to the RSS feed.

If you would like to share your queries and use RSS feed you need to run the query again, using the
magnifying glass , give it a new name and untick the private Query box; then RSS button
will be available.

Download the result lists up to 10,000 records using the Download button above the result list.
After clicking the icon, the downloading will automatically start and open an Excel sheet with
either 1000 (simple icon) result or 10,000 (icon 10k).

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NAVIGATION BAR
LOGIN

Download one or more documents by selecting in the Settings menu, in the Download tab, the
enable multi document download can be activated for logged-in users in order to download
one or more documents.

Once logged-in, users will also have access to the chemical structure search in the Search menu,
as well as Save their preferred settings, such as the search interface by default, the length of the
search result list, etc. in the Options menu.

Select the Offices when using Simple Search.

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ANNEX
SEARCH SYNTAX

The search syntax allows you to search for specific information in the advanced search. A query is a
logical sentence that consists of elements joined by special symbols called operators used to define
the relationship between words or groups of words.

An “element” can be:

a single term (“engine”);
a phrase (a group of words surrounded by quotes to search for multiple words in exact order:
“magnetic cup”); or
several of these grouped together with parentheses.

List of operators supported in the PATENTSCOPE search service:

Operators Example Explanation

BOOLEAN always use in capital

Returns all documents that contain both the first term

AND train AND plane
and the second term.
Returns all documents that contain either the first term
OR train OR plane
or the second term or both.
Returns all documents that do not contain the term
NOT NOT plane
following NOT.
Returns all documents that contain the first term and not
ANDNOT train ANDNOT plane
the term following NOT.
50 wildcards/query max
10 wildcards/individual fields (EN_ALLTXT for
example)except:
WILDCARD EN_ALL, FR_ALL, DE_AL.. 3 wildcards max
FR_ALLTXT, DE_ALLTXT… 5 wildcards max
2 wildcards/phrase max (EN_TI:“elec* car* veh*”)
No leading wildcard (EN_TI:“*elec”)
Returns all documents that contain test or text. Wildcard
search uses ? to search terms with one single character
replaced. It is possible to use for example 2 ? to replace 2
? te?t
characters;
Maximum of 3 wildcards per query for non-logged-in
users and 7 for logged-in users.

(Continued on Next Page)

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ANNEX
SEARCH SYNTAX

Returns all documents that contain electric, electrics,

electrical, electricity.
Returns all documents that contain electricity.
electr* Wildcard search uses * to search terms with 0 or more
* characters replaced either in the middle of the term or at
elec*try the end of the term
(* as the 1st character of the term is not supported).
Maximum of 3 wildcards per query for non-logged-in
users and 7 for logged-in users
OTHERS
Returns all documents in which “power” is considered to
be more relevant (10 times in the example) than
^ power^10 nuclear
“nuclear”. The caret assigns importance values to
individual query terms.
Returns all documents that contain electric and that do
+/- +electric-power not contain power Filtered searching allows to require
(+) a query term and to prohibit (-) one.
Fuzzy search returns all documents that contain room,
~ roo~
roof, root, etc.
Returns all documents that contain spaghetti or plate and
(spaghetti OR plate)
() fork. Grouping is used to group clauses to form sub-
AND fork
queries.
Proximity search allows specifying a distance between
“heart monitoring”~10 words. In the example with tilde “heart” and
~/NEAR
Heart NEAR monitoring “monitoring” are separated by 10 other words;
NEAR separates words by 5 words by default
Returns all documents that contain dates between
[01.01.2000 TO
[] 01.01.2000 and 01.01.2001. Range search uses [ ] to
01.01.2001]
include the bounds.
Returns all documents that contain names between
Smith and Townsend, but not including Smith and
{} {Smith TO Townsend}
Townsend.
Range search uses { } to exclude the bounds.

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ANNEX
FIELD CODES
Field codes are used in the Advanced Search interface to limit your search to specific fields. For
example:

To search for documents that contain the terms “precipitated calcium carbonate”, “carbon dioxide”,
and variants of the word inject in any English text and belong to the fields of technology of
papermaking or cellulose production, as represented by the IPC subclass D21, you can use the
query:

EN_ALLTXT:(“precipitated calcium carbonate” AND “carbon dioxide” AND inject*) AND IC:D21

The EN_ALLTXT field code represents a combination of the English title, abstract, description, and
claims fields, while the IC field code represents the International Patent Classification field. You
should use parentheses (brackets) to enclose all search terms for a given field; and make sure not to
put any spaces between the field code and the brackets!

List of supported field codes in the PATENTSCOPE search service:

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FIELD CODES

The most up-to-date information about the supported field codes in the PATENTSCOPE search
service is available here: https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/help/fieldsHelp.jsf

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