Dr. Richard
G. Cooper
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Providing Expert Witness Services in
Software, Internet and Electronics Technologies
Search
Viewing a patent’s Search panel is accomplished by selecting the Search tab. The figure below shows an example of the Search panel:
Elk for
Patents
™
ships with a copy of WordNet’s installation setup
file. WordNet is a free lexical information
resource provided by
The Classes button provides a link to the USPTO web site
definitions for US Classification terminology. Pressing Classes brings up your web browser pointed to the proper
site.
Query Help brings up the USPTO web page for the various
query fields, such as Assignee
Name, Inventor
Name, US
Classification, and so on. Query Help helps you identify syntax errors in your
specifications for these search fields.
Count Hits and Search are alternative buttons to help you gauge the
full scope of your search specifications and keywords.
Count Hits performs a search using the USPTO web site, but only returns the total number of hits and the first 50 patent references. Count Hits is recommended for determining the effectiveness of search keywords and criteria so that you can control the number of patents you intend to review later. Since only one web access is required to count the total number of hits, the Count Hits button saves you time compared to using the Search button. Count Hits returns its answers in the Patent | Title grid at the bottom of the figure as shown below:
By double-clicking on any
row in the Patent |
Title grid, you can load the selected
patent number into the patent dropdown list at the top of the figure, and
load its file from your hard drive, or from the USPTO web site, as
appropriate.
Search performs a full search on all the patents in the
USPTO database that match your query specifications and keyword list. Search collects every patent listed in the returns, and
can take many web accesses before it completes its function. So Search should only be used when you have determined that
your query is a good one, and you can estimate the effectiveness of your
query using Count Hits first.
The figure below shows how Search progress is monitored with the progress bar:
Search returns every patent in the Patent | Title grid when it has completed. At that point, the Number Collected is equal to the Total Hits. This situation is described at the bottom of the figure shown below where Number Collected is 685 and Total Hits is 685:
The Patent | Title grid turns yellow when it has collected new material (see figure above). Right clicking on the Patent | Title grid lets you choose from a menu of operations to delete selected rows, save the list of hits, load previously saved lists of hits, … Right clicking brings up the menu shown below:
If an entry in the grid
has been highlighted, Delete Selected
Entry will remove it from the
Patent |
Title grid list. Save Search
As .. will prompt you for a file name
in which to save the Patent |
Title grid contents. Download Search
List .. will bring up a process named
Download
Patents that will read the contents
of the Patent |
Title grid list and start downloading each patent in the
background as you continue to work on Elkfor Patents
™
, allowing you to perform other tasks as the patent
files are downloaded to your hard drive.
More detailed material on how to search is presented in the topic Search for Prior Art.
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