User Instructions

FAQs

• What services do you provide?
  In this interface, users can access four services: (1) US patent search using text, (2) US patent search using company (patent portfolio analysis), (3) Patent lawyer/firm search, (4) Lawyer ranking, (5) CPC Lookup. Login users also have access to (6) Advanced ranking.
• Is there any word limit for text input boxes?
  No. users are allowed to put text of any length in the input box. However, to retrieve the most relevant information, it is a good idea to keep the query short and precise. 
• What language can I use to do search?
  In text input fields, users are allowed to type in English, Chinese and Japanese. Internally, Japanese and Chinese are first translated into English and then the search starts. Patent Digest is working hard to expand the list of allowed languages.
• How much time should each search take?
  It depends. If the search is on something very specific, the results will be returned in less than 1 second. If the search is on something very general, then the search can take several seconds to finish. If a search does not return you with results after >10 seconds, you should refresh the page and search again if needed.
• Can I use OR in search?
  Yes. If you want to search for A or B, then you can put A <OR> B in the input box.
• How many results do you return?
  For lawyer/company ranking, we return up to 500 results; for patent search and lawyer search, we return up to 250 results.
• What is CPC?
  The Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) is a patent classification system, which has been jointly developed by the European Patent Office (EPO) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). It has more than 250,000 different categories.
• I like to see lawyer ranking for diaper, where can I find the cpc code for that?
  Type in diaper in CPC lookup tool and click on submit button. You will see a list of CPC categories sorted by relevance, pick up the most appropriate categories. If you like to see the ranking results for multiple categories, you can use <OR> to separate different categories, for example, A61F13/15 <OR> A61F13/49.
• I typed in a CPC category in lawyer ranking, but got no results, why?
  First, you need to make sure that you typed in the right CPC category; Second, there are more than 250,000 categories, and many of them have no patents granted under them. If we cannot find any patent granted under a category, we will not return any ranking result.
• You have both lawyer search and lawyer ranking, which one should I use?
  Lawyer search is based on text search, lawyer ranking is based on category search. You can start from lawyer search. If you do not see many matching results, you can get the right CPC category and then try lawyer ranking. Generally speaking, if a category is narrow, using the right text to search returns similar results as lawyer ranking. If a category is broad, lawyer search will return more precise results. In addition, lawyer ranking only returns you with the ranking results in the last 5 years, while lawyer search considers patents granted in the past 15 years.