We will search title, abstract, claims, description, assignee, inventor, database, US classification and International classification

 1. ~: ~ is the promixity search operator. "DNA RNA"~5
finds all documents containing the word "DNA" within 5 words of "RNA", in any of the main fields (title, abstract, claims and description). "5" may be replaced with any whole number
2. ^ : ^ is used to specify the weighting of a search keyword. Some of your search terms would be more important than others. ^ tells the search engine which term is more important over the other term. E.g. "DNA^2 OR RNA" finds all patents with either DNA or RNA, or both, but ranks patents with DNA higher.
 3. AND: If AND is selected and you enter "Terry Kaleung" in the "Invetor Name" field and "DNA" in the Title field, PatSnap will search the patents with Terry Kaleung as the inventor and with "DNA" in the patent title.
4. OR: If OR is selected and you enter "Terry Kaleung" in the "Invetor Name" field and "DNA" in the Title field, PatSnap will search the patents with Terry Kaleung as the inventor or patents with "DNA" in the patent title, or both.  
5. NOT: If you enter "Terry Kaleung" in the "Invetor Name" field and use "NOT" for the Title field and enter "DNA", PatSnap will search the patents with "Terry Kaleung" as the inventor and without "DNA" in the patent title. 

We have 2 kinds of wildcard symbols - "?" and "*". "?" can be used to replace any character except the first character of a word.  For example, searching using "immuni??" will find "immunity" and "immunize". "*" can be used to replace a string of characters at the end of a word root. For example, "immun*" will find "immunity", "immunize", "immunization", "immunizator" etc

You can use field search. Click "Advanced Search" -> under "Field Search", in the "field" drop-down menu, select "Inventor Name" or "Assignee Name"-> input your keyword -> click "Run Search"

We have 20 over searchable fields such as "patent number", "inventor name" and "assignee"   Click "Advanced Search" -> at the bottom of  "Field Search", click "Show All Fields" -> You will see all searchable fields. Put your mouse over the small question mark near to the field, you will see examples that help you understand the meaning of the fields. 

At the bottom of  "Field Search" click "Add Field" -> By default, the field "all" is added -> Select a field from the drop-down menu

Our field search only finds patents that match a search keyword exactly. E.g. If you enter "Bettiol, Bruno" in the Inventor field and run search, only those patents invented by Bettiol Bruno will be returned. However, our keyword search  will  search for not only exact matches, but also related patents such as patents that are invented by other invetors who have co-invented some patents with Bettiol Bruno. In general, field search is good if you know exactly what you are looking for, while keyword search is a broader way to search.  

1. You can start with some keywords, e.g. "medicine" and "immune".
2. Decide where you want to put these terms. E.g. if you want to find patents whose titles have "medicine" in it, you can use "TTL:(medicine)".
3. Choose connectors to connect two or more keywords. E.g. " TTL:(medicine) AND TTL:(immune) AND ISD:[1996-10-23 TO 2008-10-21]" will find all the patents with the keywords "medicine" and "immune" in the title and issued in the period from 1996-10-23 to 2008-10-21.
4. You can also use wildcards such as "*", "?" to broaden your search and weighting operands such as "^" to indicate the importance of certain keywords.    If you are not familiar with search command construction, field search might be more straightforward. The good news? Once you have ran a field search, we will automatically create a search command for you. You can find it in the search bar on top of the search result page and save it for later use (read how to save a search command). 

We do not set limit on the length of the search command. But usually the limit of a url is 4000 characters. So if your command is longer than that, it cannot be captured correctly by a web browser.

Yes. It is very easy to do that.  Once you run the search command, on the result page, click "Save Search Query" -> on the pop up window, you can change the name of the query to something that helps you find it later. To access saved search queries, click "Tools" -> "Saved Search"

Please refer to the screenshot below:

Patents have fairly standard format. The top of the patent includes the
1. name of the inventor
2. the assignee (often an inventor assigns a patent to his employer if the invention was conceived as part of his work for that employer)
3. the patent number
4. the date the patent application was filed
5. the date the patent issued
6. the classes and subclasses under which the patent was classified. 

The default display mode ranks the patents based on relevancy. That is, the patent on top is the most relevant. You can also rank the patents based on "Latest (issue date)" or "Oldest (filing date)" or "Most cited" which counts the number of forward citations of the patents and put the one with the most citations on top.

A "concept" is a highly relevant technology topic generated by our system based on the search result. PatSnap's text clustering engine analyzes the content of the most relevant patents and extract the most important technology terms as  concepts. These concepts can help you narrow down the search result further and locate what you are looking for. E.g. when you search for "interactive media", PatSnap engine will real-time analyze the search results and suggest relevant technology concepts such as "Media Devices", "Interactive Network", "Interactive Media Guide" and so on.

Filters are tools that help you eliminate thousands of irrelevant patents and keep only those relevant. PatSnap has different groups of filters. E.g. Users can filter by inventors' names, assignees' names, patent classes etc.

Yes. You can use a level 2 filter -"refine search". Enter a keyword in the refine search field -> click "Go" -> We will search among the current results and find those with the keyword you enter.

Sure. By default, we shows 15 results per page. You can choose to display 20, 30, 40 or 50 per page. 

"Flip-it" is another way for you to view the patents, a faster way. Under "flip-it" view, the patents will be listed on the right. In the middle of the page, we will display the first page of the original patent documents. You can use UP and DOWN keys on your keyboard to browse the first page of every patent document quickly. It is a great time-saving tool if you need to review a large quantity of patents every day. Many of our users told us they love this feature! 

"Thumbnail View" is another faster way of viewing patents. A picture is worth a thousand words. Under "Thumbnail View", we list only the drawings of patents on the result page. You can look at 24 patent drawings at one glance. It is esepcially useful for viewing design patents. 

At the top of the patent list, click "Standard". 

Sure. Go to a patent page, select "Patent Family and Status" tab -> You will see a table of patents that belong to the same family. Note that not every patent has family members. If a patent has no other family members, you will see "Patent Family information is not available for this patent." 

One patent publication can have multiple priority claim.  In the following screen,three priorities are claimed by EP2129772. The 3 priorities are US90380007, US97302307 and US2008055072.