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That is, an occasional PatentWeb user doesn’t suffer from confusing or ambiguous screens, menus and dialog boxes. Every feature of PatentWeb is purposely designed to get the job done in record time.

While, unlike the free services provided courtesy of the U.S. assistant commissioner for patents, MicroPatent’s services are not free. But unlike these free services, MicroPatent’s services are always lightning fast and don’t suffer from Web congestion.

PatentWeb’s built-in patent search engine conducts both front-page and full-text searches of a worldwide digital compilation of more than 33 million patents granted by the United States, Europe, World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO)/Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) and Japan.

This search facility integrates abstracts, bibliographic information and front-page drawings from authoritative patent sources to provide a worldwide database containing U.S. patents dating from 1976, European patents dating from 1978, PCT/world patents dating from 1978 and Japanese patents dating from 1994.

Searched patents may be conveniently retrieved by downloading or by e-mail attachment either in MicroPatent’s TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) or in Adobe’s portable document format (PDF).

Patents stored in the TIFF format require the free MicroPatent viewer or another TIFF viewer; patents stored in PDF require the Acrobat viewer. Since clients typically have the Acrobat viewer installed as a browser plug-in, I routinely download patents in PDF.

If preferred, hard copies of searched patents conveniently can be obtained via fax, regular mail or overnight delivery from MicroPatent’s FaxPat subsidiary.

PatentWeb searching is easy to orchestrate. For a pedestrian search, the “Simple Search” option should be invoked. As with any patent search, the scope of the search first must be specified. U.S. patents can be searched from as far back as Jan. 6, 1976, or from January 1997 or 1998 for more limited searches.

On the international front, European patents and patent applications can be searched from Dec. 20, 1978, PCT patent applications can be searched from Oct. 19, 1978, and Japanese patents can be searched from Oct. 1, 1976.

Once the scope of the search is selected by clicking the appropriate box, then key words corresponding to words incorporated into titles, abstracts, inventors’ names and assignees are specified.

Clicking the “Search” button triggers the search based upon this selection criteria. Since keywords usually apply only to titles and abstracts, the default Boolean connector for terms entered in the “Key Word” window is “and,” requiring both (or all) terms be present for a hit.

On the other hand, to accept a record having only one term, the “or” Boolean connector should be specified in the “Key Word” window.

For example, to initiate a simple search for a hair blower apparatus, the keyword string entered would be “hair blower.” This entry is equivalent to “hair and blower.”

A search screen then indicates how the number of hits found and lists the patent number or patent application serial number, along with its title and inventors or applicants.

You can see a drawing of the invention by going to the title page. If the full patent is of interest, then the “Order Patent” box should be clicked. If all of the patents found are of interest, then the “Check All” box should be clicked. Patents and other patent-related documents are ordered easily by clicking the “Review Patent Order” button on the “Patent List” screen.

If the patent number or number of an international publication is known, then the pertinent document may be retrieved by invoking the “Search by Number” option.

The selected records are retrieved by just entering the particular number (without commas) in the search criteria window. Leaving at least one space between numbers entered in the search criteria window may retrieve multiple patents or the like.

The meat and potatoes of PatentWeb searching is accomplished via the general-purpose, ever-powerful “Fielded Search” option.

PatentWeb has 11 search fields to fully describe search criteria. These multiple search fields are:

• “Patent/Publication No.”
• “Issue/Publication Date”
• “Title or Abstract”
• “U.S. or International Class”
• “Assignee/Applicant”
• “Inventors”
• “Application No.”
• “Filing Date”
• “Priority Data”
• “U.S. Patents Cited”
• “Related U.S. Data.”

Similar to conventional case law researchers such as Westlaw, each search field may be qualified using proximity operators, wildcards and parentheses. For hard-core patent researchers, PatentWeb provides a superb full-text search function.

Another useful feature is the “Family Lookup” feature, which seeks related patents. First, the patents that share at least one application number with the basis patent are located and displayed. This “Family Lookup” returns a set of patent-related documents that have at least one common originating patent application. Then, it seeks an “extended patent family” in which a collection of patents has at least one common originating patent application, including all procedural stages of the patent procurement cycle and all patents that have matured from divisional and continuation applications.

For the “Simple Search,” “Fielded Search” or “Full-Text Search,” the list of patent references is shown when a particular patent is selected for on-screen viewing. Unfortunately, unlike patents displayed at the PTO site, there is no hot linking by clicking on a listed patent.

Similarly, again unlike patents displayed at the PTO site, there is no hot linking to patent references on a searched patent’s title pages.

To link to such patents, it’s necessary for the user to invoke the “Search by Number” option. This hot linking deficiency — obviously a necessary convenience for searchers — is PatentWeb’s only flaw.

For those struggling to find what they need, help is only a mouse-click away. Since PatentWeb’s screens are inherently intuitive, I found it typically unnecessary to visit a particular “Help” screen more than once — even after a prolonged period of nonuse.

MicroPatent has fulfilled its promise of providing a patent research engine for the 21st century: PatentWeb’s functions and features are neatly integrated, allowing you to deal with a diversity of patent searching situations.

Price: $95 for one day of full-text searches, $7,500 for one year; contact company for other prices.

Reviewed by Al Harrison, patent attorney practicing intellectual property and computer law at Harrison & Egbert in Houston.

Jun/Jul '01 Issue

PROS
An easy-to-use, intuitive, fast service for dealing with any and all patent-related scenarios.

CONS
No hot linking feature.

VERDICT
A definite buy.

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Updated 09/19/01
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