Report:PatBase/Search Interface/The Search Forms/Quick Search
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Quick Search
The Quick Search page is a simplified search form which only contains two fields: one for keyword searching, and one for "Names" (including both inventor and assignee names). There are also a few simplified menu options that allow users to select a general date range and a country of interest quickly. Only the most commonly searched choices are displayed here, and reducing the number of options available to the user is intended to make this search form ideal for those who just need to run a quick search.
To assist novice users, the Quick Search form also contains a short discussion of how to use the search fields. Users can view this short guide by selecting the "more..." link at the bottom of the form, beside the introductory sentence and "i" icon. It provides users with basic searching help and examples of keyword and name searches. Example keyword and name searches are also displayed directly below the search boxes.
The default search settings for searches conducted from the Quick Search page are different than searches conducted from the command line or Structured Search forms, in the following ways:
- First, stemming is automatically applied to searches conducted from the Quick Search page, whereas the tilde (~) must be used to indicate stemming when conducting a search from the Structured Search form or the command line interface.
- In addition, double quotes must be used around multiple terms in the Quick Search page to indicate a phrase search. In contrast, the Structured Search form automatically performs a phrase search on multi-term queries if Boolean operators are not used.
Editor's Note:Commercial patent search services must often keep multiple user groups in mind when designing search interfaces. For users who do not need to carefully craft a search query by searching multiple specific fields or choosing exact date ranges, the Structured Search form may actually be too detailed, and the number of options on the form may be overwhelming. To address this issue, Quick Search form is available for users who might find the Structured Search form too complicated to deal with for simple tasks. PatBase also offers a far simpler version of their product, PatBase Express, which offers this form as the default search interface.
