PatSnap allows you to customize your search settings and search results display. This can be done using the dedicated settings button located on the top right-hand part of the search results page.
Search Preferences
With the search preferences, you can customize the search criteria prior to or after the search.
Stemming
Stemming will automatically look for any variations of each and every word you entered in your search. It produces morphological variants of a root or base word. For instance, it can reduce words such as "spraying", "sprayable", "sprayed" or "sprays" to the root word of "spray". This will allow you to search for a base word and not have to additionally include variants of that word in your query.
More information on Stemming can be found here: Stemming and Wildcard 101
Language
By default, the search results page displays Title, Assignee Name, and Inventor Name in the original language. However, PatSnap provides the opportunity to set the English/Japanese language as the default language for the Title field. You can also view the original text alongside the translation.
The translation will be a "machine translation" for all the geography, but China, Japan, Taiwan, and Vietnam are supported with a "human-assisted" translation.
Result Display
For search results, PatSnap includes any documents related to a certain patent from the original application, its revised versions, and the actual granted patent documents. With the "Result Display" menu, you can group/hide patents. Despite the utility as a refinement tool, it strongly affects the following analysis:
One document per application
When showing "one document per application", you can choose whether to put the most up to date and the recent application of the oldest application as your priority.
One PatSnap family representative per group and Jurisdiction Priority
In this specific case, the family representative is picked based on two criteria:
- Matching with query
- Selected preferences
This means that if there is a patent in our PatSnap family that doesn't match the query, despite the selected preferences, it will not be picked up as a representative.
One INPADOC family representative per group and Jurisdiction Priority
In this specific case, the family representative is picked based on the same two criteria as above:
- Matching with query
- Selected preferences
This means that if there is a patent in the INPADOC family that doesn't match the query, despite the selected preferences, it will not be picked up as a representative.
One simple family representative per group and Jurisdiction Priority
Simple families are collections of different documents related to the same patent (such as application revisions or continuations). This grouping criterion will allow you to pick up only one representative document for the family. The criteria are the same as above:
- Matching with query
- Selected preferences
This means that if there is a patent in the simple family that doesn't match the query, despite the selected preferences, it will not be picked up as representative.
You can find out more about patent families using this: Patent Families 101
Tag if family exists
This feature allows you to tag patents within the search results that contains family data from a specified database. In other words, this flag icon indicates if patents within the search results are part of the same family as another member from a certain country. It is possible to choose from three family types: Simple, INPADOC, or PatSnap. And from the the Authorities: CN, DE, EP, FR, GB, JP, KR, RU, US, and WO. In the image below, the tag indicates that there is a US patent within the INPADOC family these results belongs to.
The Tag Family feature is extremely useful if combined with the grouping options. It allows us to understand if a patent within the search result contains family data from a reference database despite not showing as the main representative.
Search Result Display
PatSnap allows users to customize the search results page. You can add up to 16 fields. Publication Number is set as an automatic field here.
