Decisions of the Commissioner of Patents

Help: Search Language

The following is a brief description of the search language used by the text search engine. This language is valid in all text fields except for the Decision of the Commissioner of Patents number, the application number and the patent number fields.

• Word Search
• Proximity Operators
• Logical Operators
• Wildcards

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Word Search

• Do not put commas or periods in with your search words.
• Non-alphanumeric characters: "/ " and "-" are kept in the text index. All other non-alphabetic and non-numeric characters are ignored.
• Phrases: To search for a phrase of several words, use double quotes, for example, "electric transformer".

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Proximity Operators

<NEAR>

search for two or more words within n number of words of each other. n is an integer between 1 and 1024. <NEAR> defaults to <NEAR/256>

<PARAGRAPH

same as <NEAR/100>

<SENTENCE>

same as <NEAR/15>

<ORDER>

specifies the order of words when using <PARAGRAPH>, <SENTENCE> or <NEAR/n>

Syntax:

• word1 <operator> word2
• word1 <ORDER> <operator> word2
• word1 <operator> word2 <operator> word3 ...

For multi-word searches, <operator> must be identical and the search is for all words to be within n words of each other.

Examples:

• robot <near> arm
• wrist <sentence> hollow
• wrist <near/5> pin <near/5> hollow
• fiberglass <near> covering
• rotating <order> <sentence> armature

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Logical Operators

<AND>

search for documents with all words.

<OR>

search for documents with at least one of the words.

<ACCRUE>

search for documents with any word. The more words found the better the score.

<NOT>

exclude documents with specified word. Used only with <AND> and <OR>

Syntax:

• word1 <operator> word2
• word1 <operator> word2 <operator> word3 ...

Examples:

• cpu <or> processor
• market <and> survey
• (CD <or> cd) <and> platter
• computer <and> <not> mainframe

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Wildcards

• "*" specifies zero or more alphanumeric characters
• "?" specifies one alphanumeric character

Examples:

• "fire*" will match fire, fires, fireman, firefighter, etc.
• "?am" will match cam, ram, jam, etc.
• "Wickr*" <near> Kumar

Note: Wildcards will lengthen the time of your search.