Part 2 - The Results Screen – PatSnap Help Center

Once you have received the results for a particular search, you'll soon realize there are various options available to you from that page. These allow you to export your results, create alerts, refine and/or group your results, and various other options as well.

This is what the results screen looks like:

Since this guide is meant to be an introduction to PatSnap, we'll try to keep it as simple as possible. If you want to learn more about some of the options available in this screen, you can find links to relevant reading material at the end of this page. Now, let's go over each one of these features.

Views

You are able to select how to display your results, there are five different views available. Each of the views will display different parts of a patent, and each one has different fields to choose from (more on that later).

You can find them at the top of your list of results.

Table

Standard

Full Images

Thumbnail

Flip-it

Analysis Mode

Settings

Apart from the views, PatSnap also allows users to customize their search results display in different ways. This can be done using the "Settings" button located at the top right part of the results screen.

Fields

The first tab of the settings menu is called "Fields". Here, you can add (or remove) the parts of a patent you wish to display (or not) on your results screen. Publication Number is selected by default, and you can add up to 12 different fields.

The available options for each view may vary a little, "Thumbnail" and "Flip-It" views do not support Fields.

View preferences

The second tab of the settings menu is "View Preferences". There are multiple settings that can be adjusted here. Result Display, Tag if Family exists, Language, and Stemming.

Results Display (Grouping)

The first option is "Results Display", it will allow you to group your total results by application, or by family. The available grouping options are:

Ungrouped: This option will display all the records that match your query.

One document per application: A patent can go through multiple edits through the application process. This shows only one document, according to the settings.

One representative per simple family: Patent applications are often filed in more than one country, with these applications comprising a simple family. This option will display only one document, according to the settings.

One representative per INPADOC family: Similar to the Simple families, this option will group documents that cover a single invention, over multiple countries. INPADOC families, as defined by the European Patent Office, include minor variations and extensions on the original invention

One representative per PatSnap Family: Patent applications are often filed in more than one country, with these applications comprising a simple family. PatSnap families include minor variations and extensions on the original invention.

Criteria for Choosing a Representative

It is also possible to customize the criteria for choosing a representative of the resulting grouped results.

When selecting "One document per application", you can choose the representative to be the oldest or the latest publication, or by publication type.

When selecting any of the family groupings (Simple, INPADOC, or Extended), you can choose to give priority to the representative based on Authority, Publication Date, Application date, or Most relevant.

It is important to remember that the grouping feature will only consider the results that matched your query. As an example, If you give priority to family members from the US, but your search only matched representatives from other authorities, then another representative will be displayed instead, even if outside of your results, a document from the US exists as part of the same family.

Tag If Family Exists

This option will display a flag indicator if a patent within the search results contains other INPADOC family members that belong to the tag family. In the image below, the tag indicates that within the family of this document, there is a family member from the US.

It is possible to tag a result if it has a family member from CN, DE, EP, FR, GB, JP, KR, RU, US, or WO.

Language

By default, the results of a search are displayed in their original language. However, PatSnap provides the opportunity to set the English or Japanese as the default language for the Title field.

The translation will be a "machine translation" for every country, except China, Japan, Taiwan, and Vietnam, which are supported with a "human-assisted" translation.

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. It will search for the original word and expand the search to consider singular, plural, and tense variations

For example, if you choose to turn stemming ON, and search for the word "spraying", it will also search for variations like "sprayable", "sprayed" or "sprays". This will allow you to search for a base word and not have to additionally include variants of that word in your query.

Stemming OFF will only search for exact matches of the keywords entered.

Stemming ON only supports English words. Stemming does not apply to Assignee, Inventor, and any other person-related fields.

Filtering Your Results

On the left-hand side of the screen, you will be able to refine your search in two separate ways. One way is by typing relevant keywords into the text box with "Refine keywords" written within it; the other way is using the refine filters underneath.

Refine Using Keywords

You will be able to write additional keywords in combination with boolean operators. By using the operator AND, only the results that contain the additional keywords will remain. Using NOT will exclude every patent that contains the additional keywords. These filters apply to the full text of a document..

If you click on the "Advanced Refinement" button on the right side of the text box, you will have access to the same template that is used in our "Field Search". This will allow you to refine or exclude your results using keywords that only apply to certain fields, or parts of a patent.

Refine Using Filters

If you choose to refine using the filters below, you'll have many options that will reflect information relevant to your results. In this tool bar, you will be able to use the following filters:

Grouped Assignee

Name Grouping allows you to manually group different Standardized Current Assignee names together throughout the platform. You can create up to 100 groups with 500 Assignees in each one. Once you have done this, you will see a green “G” symbol next to the groups that you have created on the results page, and any other part of the platform they may appear.

To refine using your previously created groups, select the groups that you want to use in your search.

Assignee

To refine by assignee, select the assignee names that you want to use in your search. In the drop-down menu, you can choose from our different assignee fields, standardized current assignee, current assignee, standardized original assignee (applicant) and original assignee (applicant).

Classification

To refine by classification, select the classification codes you want to use in your search. You can choose from the different classification codes here, those being IPC, CPC, LOC and UPC. You can also choose different levels for the various classification codes here.

Application Year

To refine by application year, select the range of application years you want to use in your search.

Std. Current Assignee Type

The different Std. Current Assignee types available are:

Company: separate legal entities that have filed for a patent under their registered organization name.
Person: an individual, typically the inventor, listed as an assignee of the patent.
Academy: educational establishments and public research organizations (e.g. Universities).
Government: bodies, offices and authorities (e.g. the US Federal Government and Technology Transfer Offices).
Other: organizations that do not fall within the above categories, including unincorporated associations, trusts and charities.

Authority

To refine by authority, select the authorities that you want to use in your search.

Patent Type

To refine by patent type, select the type of patents you want to use in your search.

GBC Class

To refine by GBC, select the GBCs that you want use in your search.

Publication Year

Similar to application year, to refine by publication year, select the publication years you want to use in your search.

Simple Legal Status

To refine by simple legal status, select the simple legal statuses you want to use in your search. We currently have full simple legal statuses for patents from 20 different jurisdictions.

Legal Status

To refine by legal status, select the legal statuses you want to use in your search. We currently have full legal statuses for patents from 20 different jurisdictions where some status types are only available for specific authorities which is due to the variability in legal systems across jurisdictions.

Legal Events

To refine by legal event, select the legal events you want to use in your search.

Family Country Presence

To refine by country of family presence, select the countries from the options.

Inventor

To refine by inventor, select the inventors you want to use in your search.

First Inventor

To refine by first inventor, select the first inventors you want to use in your search.

Agency

To refine by agency, select the agencies you want to use in your search.

First Current Assignee

To refine by first current assignee, select the first current assignee name.

Current Assignee Count

To refine by the Current Assignee Count, move the white circles along the green line.

Cites Count and Cited By Count

To refine by the amount of times patents Cited or were Cited By, move the white circles along the green line.

Count of PatSnap Family members

To refine by the number of family members in a PatSnap Family, move the white circles along the green line.

Patent Value

To refine by patent value, move the white circles along the green line to choose what range of values you want the patents you search for to have.

Main IPC

To refine by Main IPC, select the IPC from the options.

SEP Source

To refine by SEP source, select the SEP sources you want to use in your search

Most common refinements

Although all the refinements may well be used at some point we are aware that some tend to be used more than the others.

One of the common refinements is by simple legal status. This is often used for FTO searches since if a patent is inactive it can not be used as a prevention tool which gives others freedom to operate using the technologies mentioned in the patent.

Another common refinement is by authority. Since a patent that is filed to a national patent office is only enforceable in that country, if you choose to operate in a specific country, only patents from that country can be legally enforceable in preventing you from doing that. So if you refine by authority, you can see where there are white space opportunities available to you in countries that you are interested in operating within.

One more common refinement is by application year. This will enable you to get an idea of the technology fields that were particularly popular in a specific period of time. It also will give you some idea of the application trends in a given area.

It is also common to refine by IPC/CPC. This will allow you to focus your search on a particular area of technology. This will also enable you to see what is already out there in terms of innovation for this area and allow you to predict what the future progress may be in this area.

Other Features

There are some other options present in the results page that we are not going to explore in depth as part of this guide, but it is worth mentioning them, as they may come in handy at a later point in your PatSnap journey.

Analyze Results

Clicking on the Analyze button above your search results will allow you to select one of three different options. Analyze, Landscape, or Insights.

Analyze

By choosing Analyze, you'll be able to conduct a detailed analysis of your results based on a variety of factors.

All views can be amended and further refined by clicking on the chart on the Overview page, or selecting the relevant Analysis or Refine options from the menu on the left-hand side.
It is also possible to export the information by clicking on the "Export" icon at the bottom of each view.

Copy/Save Query

You can copy the query you just used to your clipboard by clicking on the "Copy Query" button. If you have refined your search using the menu on the left-hand side of the screen , the refinement will be included as part of your query.

You will also find the option to "Save Query", used to save your query and also give it a name.

You will be able to access all of your previously saved queries from the sidebar menu located at the left of the screen. There, you have the ability to combine your saved queries, and experiment with the results.

Export

The "Export" button will let you export the search results.

You are able to choose how many patents will be exported, what format you want to export the results in, and what fields you want to include as part of the export.

Alerts

Using the "Set Alerts" button, you are able to set up an email alert for your search, which will let you know when there are any new patents relevant to your search query.

You can give this email alert a title, choose who it is sent to, select how frequently and when it is sent, and also choose whether to be sent an alert even when there are no updates.

The different Alert options to choose from are:

New Patents: Alerts when a new patent matching the search query is published.
New Invention: Alerts when a new patent that does not belong to an existing family is published.
Legal Status: Alerts when patents' legal status changes.
Citation: Alerts when patents receive a new citation.
Family: Alerts when new patents are added to the family.
Litigation: Alerts when litigation information has been updated.
Licensing: Alerts when licensing information has been updated.
Expiration: Alerts when patents have expired

Save to Workspace

Using the "Save to Workspace" button you can add the results to a Workspace.

From here you can select which patents need to be added, whether to set up an automatic update and decide which Workspace to add them to.

Highlighter

This tool will allow you to see keywords highlighted in different colors in the results screen, and some other parts of PatSnap as well. It can be toggled ON/OFF.

The Highlighter tool supports multiple keywords with the same color, separating them with semicolons.

Sorting

It is possible to sort your results by selecting one of the 13 options. You can choose to order by Most relevant, Latest Application, Oldest Application, Application Num (Z to A), Application Num (A to Z), Latest Publication, Oldest Publication, Publication Num (Z to A), Publication Num (A to Z), Oldest Priority, Cited By Count, INPADOC Family Count, and Patent Value.

Selecting Patents

You can select one, or multiple patents from the results screen by hovering your mouse over the number on the left side of each entry, and then checking the box that appears.

When you do that, you'll notice that a menu pops up from the lower right part of the screen. From this menu, you are able to Export, Save to a Workspace, Extract Chemical Structures, Extract sequences, or Search the family members of the selected patents. You can also undo your selection.

Pages

Finally, at the bottom of the screen, you can choose how many results there are on each page (20, 50 or 100) or to navigate between the available pages.

Best Practices for Search with PatSnap

To close this part of the guide, I'd recommend you to watch this video. It covers topics relevant to the first two parts of this guide. It goes through a few useful tips on best practice for whenever you perform searches with PatSnap.

Content:

1. Grouping your results by families
2. Limiting your searches by Authority
3. Building for complex searches
4. Changing the visible fields in your results view

You can also check:

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