Filtering and refining search is one of the most important features on The Lens. While you may start with a simple query, you can use filters to drill down into the data to get more precise result sets. This may help you find a specific patent you are looking for, or help you clearly define a landscape of patent for analysis, or just help you explore the connections and relationships within the patent literature. Filters on The Lens are faceted, so you can see the number of results captured by each filter within a search. This is useful when exploring the content of your search.
Location
Search Bar
At the top of the patent search result page is the search box where search text can be modified. Also, there is “Edit Search” button which can be used to refine the search in structured search.
Filter Pane
On the left of each Lens page is a widget bar with a filter icon. Clicking on the icon will show all the filtering option in a filter pane. All the facets where filter can be applied are organised into tabs and can be collapsed when not in use.
How to Use
Refine Search Terms
In the search box on the top of the search result page you can see your current search terms. If you would like to modify these terms you can simply edit this text and hit “Enter” key in your keyboard. Alternatively use the “Edit Search” button just below the search box to the refine the search terms in a Structured Search.
Apply Filter
Each filter can be selected and then activated by hitting the “refine” button. You will then see a red box over each filter tab, showing you how many active filters, you have in that tab. You can use the “clear” button to remove filters, or simply make a new search to start again from scratch. A new search can be made at any time by clicking the down arrow next to the Refine button. All filtering options alter the number of documents included in your results.
Patent Filtering Options
The facets over which the Patent search can be filtered are listed below:
You can also limit your search to Patents you have recorded Inventorship for in The Lens. Get more information about inventorship on inventorship.
- Dates
Select between “Published”, “Filed” or “Priority” dates to search documents by one of these parameters. You can set your own custom date range before hitting the “Refine” button. - Flags
Select to include or exclude a selection of flags from your search. Aggregated counts is visible in the filter sidebar. The Flags option you can select are:- Has Title
- Has Abstract
- Has Claim
- Has Description
- Has Full Text
- Has Disclaimer
- Has Granted Patent
- Has Grant Event
- Has National Phase
- Has Legal Events
- Has DOCDB
- Has Applicants
- Has Owner
- Has Inventor
- Has Agent
- Has Examiner
- Has Sequence Listing
- Cited By Patent
- Cites NPL
- Cites Patent
- Cites Resolved NPL
- Jurisdictions
Select to include or exclude a selection of jurisdictions from your search. Aggregated count for a jurisdiction is visible in the filter sidebar. Choose between the top jurisdictions represented in your search or click “Choose More” to select from our full list of available jurisdictions. - Applicants
Select from the list of the top applicants for your search to limit your results to only patents with any of the selected applicants. Aggregated count for the applicant is visible in the filter sidebar. - Inventors
Select from the list of the top inventors for your search to limit your results to only documents with any of the selected inventors listed. You can also search for an inventor, which will display only results where an inventor of the document matches (or partially matches) the name you searched for. Aggregated count for the inventor is visible in the filter sidebar. - Owners US
Select from the list of the top US Owners (assignment data sourced from the USPTO) for your search to limit your results to only documents with any of the selected owners. Aggregated count for the owner is visible in the filter sidebar. - Agents and Attorneys
Agent and Attorney information has been extracted from the front page of full text patent documents and is now available for search and filtering, including the name, address and country of the agent / attorney. The agent/attorney information is also displayed on the summary tab of individual patents. Aggregated count for the agent and attorney is visible in the filter sidebar - Legal Status
Legal status is automatically calculated from available data sources and is subject to change. The legal status option you can select are:- Active: Granted patent is in force
- Pending: Application is pending
- Discontinued: Application discontinued, withdrawn or rejected, e.g. discontinuation before grant
- Inactive: Granted patent not in force because of lapse, non-fee payment, etc. The patent hasn’t reached the term date and can be revived
- Expired: Patent has reached the term date and is no longer in force
- Patented: PCT applications that have been granted in one or more designated states, or non-PCT granted patents without enough information to calculate the term date
- Unknown: Not enough information to calculate status
- Document Types
Select from the list of the top document types for your search to limit your results to only documents of those types. Some of the document type are:
Some of the document type are:- Patent Application
- Granted Patent
- Limited Patent
- Amended Patent
- Unknown
- Search Report
- Design Right
- Patent of Addition
- Abstract
- Ambigious
- Cited Works
Select from the list of the top cited works to limit your results to only documents with any of the selected cited work listed. - Biologicals
Select either Nucleotide (DNA) or Amino Acids (Protein) as the sequence type, to find only documents with that at least one sequence of that type. Select from the top species listed to limit your search to only documents with sequences declared as originating from any of the selected species. Search for a biological organism to limit your search to only documents with sequences declared as originating from any species which matches (or partially matches) your species search term. - Classifications
Select from the top CPC, IPCR or US Classifications for your search results to limit your results to only documents with at least one of those classifications. - Document Families
The “Group by Simple Families” option will modify your results, so they only display one patent from each patent family. A patent family is a set of either patent applications or publications taken in multiple countries to protect a single invention by a common inventor(s) and then patented in more than one country. This option is great for filtering out the numerous duplicates of the same invention. Note that this option may disrupt the number of search results displayed in the page breadcrumbs, it may also cause the “select all” add and remove functions to slow down noticeably. For more information see Patent Family Info. You can select jurisdictions to include only families which have at least one member in the jurisdictions selected. You can choose from the full list of jurisdictions using the choose more button.
You can select Family options:- Group by Simple Family
- Expand by Simple Family
- Group by Extended Family
- Expand by Extended Family
- Query Tools
Search can be limited to only display results where we have full text currently available.- Query language
Query language other than English can also be selected to search for documents in other languages. - Regular Expression
A regular expression (shortened as regex or regexp) is a sequence of characters that specifies a search pattern in text. A regular expression is a way to match patterns in data using placeholder characters, called operators. Usually such patterns are used by string-searching algorithms for “find” or “find and replace” operations on strings, or for input validation. - Stemming
Stemming of results can be turned on or off, by default it is turned on. Stemming is an algorithm which modifies your search so only the “stems” of words are checked. For example, with stemming on the words: Searching for ‘acidic’ or ‘acidity’ will be stemmed to the root work ‘acid’ to include more matches. Disable for stricter matching. With stemming turned on you will get more results at the cost of some accuracy, and when it is turned off you will have higher accuracy but might miss close results. - Inventorship
You can also limit your search to Patents you have recorded Inventorship for in The Lens. Get more information about inventorship on inventorship.
- Query language