Report:PatAnalyst/Data Coverage/Summary

Summary

Full and Partial Text Collections

The following coverage dates were obtained from the system's user guide materials and represent the reported start dates for each collection. Please note that gaps in coverage may exist in any collection due to a number of factors, such as missing documents, scanning errors, OCR errors, even failure of national and regional patent offices to report data. No data source can be considered 100% complete, and searchers should consult as many unique data sources as possible.

Other Coverage

Citations: Citations are present for the documents in the above table under the “Cited Documents” time period. Source codes are present for US and EP citations.

Legal Status: No legal status information is available through PatAnalyst.

Family Data: Family data is available via INPADOC family data.

Document Images: Full document images are available for:

Years available vary. For specific document image coverage, see the Images section.

Bibliographic Coverage

The following coverage dates were obtained from the system's user guide materials and represent the reported start dates for each collection. Coverage is accurate as of the July, 2008 PatAnalyst database coverage help file. Although it seems clear that the system uses INPADOC as a major source of its bibliographic data, the system also provides this table of coverage information, which contains coverage dates that may not exactly match those provided by the EPO for the current INPADOC file. Bibliographic coverage information in the table below which appears to differ from what is available in INPADOC is denoted by an asterisk * symbol. Please note the date that this information was last updated, which is shown above the table. See Downloading INPADOC Coverage for the current coverage in the INPADOC bibliographic file.

Please note that gaps in coverage may exist in any collection due to a number of factors, such as missing documents, scanning errors, OCR errors, even failure of national and regional patent offices to report data. No data source can be considered 100% complete, and searchers should consult as many unique data sources as possible. See this article for a discussion of unique worldwide bibliographic and family data collections, such as INPADOC, the Derwent World Patents Index, and CAplus.

For an in-depth discussion of this system's bibliographic coverage, please see the Bibliographic Coverage section.

Bibliographic Coverage Table last updated July, 2008

* Indicates that coverage dates appear to be beyond INPADOC coverage.

Editor's Note:

Testing of the database has shown there to be inconsistencies between the help documentation’s description of the data coverage and the actual database itself. For example: the tables specify if there is an end date to coverage, yet there is no end date mentioned in the Indian section despite testing showing coverage ending in 2003. Discrepancies such as this, although not rampant, should lead the user to take a skeptical look at any PatAnalyst user documentation claims.

Several tests of the database showed different coverage than was claimed in the PatAnalyst help documents. In this case, Indian patent coverage ends in 2003, but is described as to-date in the help documentation.