Help on the Advanced Search Page

This page contains information on how to use the Advanced Search Page. If, after reading this page, you have any unanswered questions, please read the FAQ.

The Advanced Search Page allows you to make a  query of the US Patent Full Text Database using command line search syntax. There are 3 steps to submit a query using the Advanced Search Page:

1. Select a year or range of years to search from the Select years to search drop-down menu.
2. Type your search statement into the Text Entry box marked Query.
3. Hit the Search button.

Some points to note:

• The search is not case-sensitive. Searching for Needle and searching for needle will produce the same results.
  
  
• For some terms, you must specify the field to search in to get the hits you expect. For instance, if you are searching for a patent number or inventor name, you must enter a field code for the 'Patent Number' or 'Inventor Name' fields. Just searching for the patent number or inventor name in all fields will not retrieve hits in these fields, but rather anywhere in the body of the text. For a complete list of the available field codes, see the chart at the bottom of the Advanced Search Page. If you are having difficulty searching for a specific field, please see the Field Search Help Page.
  
  
• There is a maximum length limitation to searches. This length is the length of the fully-expanded search after query parsing. This fully-expanded query is not what is shown at the top of the hit-list or error/status page, but can be viewed by looking at a resulting hit-list link using your browser's Right-click -Properties capability. Queries which fully expand to lengths of more than 256 characters are not supported, may not work at all, and may not return valid results even if they do appear to have worked.
  
  
• When a search query has been entered, the search results and a hit list of the 50 most recent patents will be displayed.
  
  
• The Refine Search box uses the same search syntax as the Advanced Search Page. The refined search is automatically conducted in the same year range as your original search.
  
  
• Enter a number in the Start At box to skip to a 50-increment document list containing that number. For example, with a long search results list, entering '251' in the Start At box is easier and faster than hitting the 'Next 50 Hits' button 5 times.

The Advanced Search Page provides the greatest flexibility for complex searches of the Patent databases. These features include:

• Nested Quick Expressions
• Field Searching
• Phrase Searching
• Date Range Searching
• Right Truncation
• Stopwords

Nested Quick Expressions

You can use the Advanced Search Page to create and execute Quick searches with more than two search terms that use the Quick operators (OR, AND, ANDNOT). Along with these operators, you can use parentheses to further clarify your search statement.  In the absence of parentheses, all operators associate from left to right.

Example 1

tennis AND (racquet OR racket)

If you enter this query, you will retrieve a list of all patents which contain both the term tennis and either racket or racquet somewhere in the document.

Example 2

television OR (cathode AND tube)

This query would return patents containing either the word television OR both the words cathode AND tube.

Example 3

needle ANDNOT ((record AND player) OR sewing)

This complex query generates a list of hits that contain the word needle, but does not contain any references to sewing. In addition, none of the hits would contain the combination of record AND player.

Field Searching

The Advanced Search Page allows you to search individual fields found within patents. You can find a list of all indexed fields in the table on the bottom of the page. The full names for each field are given on the right of the column and the corresponding field code is listed on the left.

To narrow your search to hits occurring within a single field, precede your search term with the field code, followed by a forward slash (/). If you do not select a specific field, the text of the entire patent will be searched. If you need help with field searching, see the Field Searching Help Page.

Example 1

IN/Dobbs

This will search for the word Dobbs within the Inventors Name field of the database. Occurrences of the search term anywhere else on the front page will be ignored.

Example 2

CCL/270/31

This query searches for the Current US Classification Class/Subclass 270/31, and will return a list of all patents assigned to that class.

Example 3

AN/MCNC AND TTL/solder

As this example demonstrates, you can mix field searching with Quick searching. This query would retrieve a list of hits which contain MCNC in the Assignee Name field, and the word solder in the Patent Title.

Note that field names are associative. Using the search statement ttl/(nasal or nose) is the same as ttl/nasal or ttl/nose. 

Phrase Searching

A group of words enclosed in quotation marks (") will be treated as a single search term. This allows you to search for a multi-word phrase rather than specifying each word as a separate term. 

Note that you cannot use truncation ("$") within a phrase that is enclosed in quotation marks.  

Example 1

"bowling balls"

Searching on this phrase would return a list of all the patents which have the phrase bowling balls anywhere within the indexed text.

Example 2

AN/"General Motors"

This query would find all occurrences of the phrase general motors within the Assignee Name field.

Date Range Searching

You can specify a range of dates you are interested in searching, rather than having to specify a certain day or month to narrow your search. This feature is only available in date fields, such as  Issue Date and Application Date. This is done by using the -> operator between two dates.

Example

ISD/11/1/1997->5/12/1998

This query would return all patents in the database which were issued any day on or after Nov. 1, 1997, and before or on May. 12, 1998. If your range covers all of the patents issued in a particular year, you will get faster results by selecting just that year instead of searching all of the dates in that year as a range.

Note:  The selected years must match the range of years you are searching.

Both dates in your query must be properly formatted for your search to work. See the help entries on Issue Date and Application Date for details.

Right Truncation

The Advanced Search Page supports right truncation in queries. This allows you to use a wildcard on the right side of a search term, to retrieve words that begin with a certain string. If you are searching in a specific field, the string must be at least 3 characters in length. If you are not searching in a specific field, the string must be at least 4 characters in length. You cannot use truncation ("$") within a phrase that is enclosed in quotation marks, for example searching AN/"general mot$" will result in an error.

Example

elec$

This query  would return a large number of hits, since it would retrieve patents that contain the words electricity, electric, electronic, etc. To reduce the number of hits retrieved, you may want to truncate on a longer string. For example, if you are only interested in patents dealing with electronics, you might truncate as follows: electron$ to eliminate electricity, etc.

Be aware that the default search will search every word in every patent in the years you specify.  This can result in very large numbers of hits.  It may be preferable to begin by limiting your search to the title or abstract fields.

Stopwords

Stopwords are terms that appear so frequently in patent text that they lose their usefulness as search terms. Although they are not indexed as search terms, they will be displayed in your search results.