Report:PatBase/Viewing Results/Display Formats

Display Formats

The problem of huge record size due to aggregated data can be overcome by changing which data fields are displayed, and which are hidden. PatBase designers have created several different record display formats, which are selectable from a dropdown menu at the top of the “Display Results” page (the hitlist).

The "Display Format" dropdown menu.

These options consist of pre-defined formats and one custom option, which must be user-defined:

• Classic - Full record with abstract and image at the top of the record
• Full - Full record with abstract and image at the end of the record
• Biblio – Described in the user guide as the “full bibliographic information”: title, priority data, family table, assignee, inventor, classification data, and cited documents.
• Scan – Described as a “short” biblio format: title, abstract, and assignee. Search hits are displayed in condensed format with alternating background colors to make them more distinct.

Documents viewed with the Scan display format.

• Image - Introduced in 2009, the Image display format is intended to help users who wish to scan patent drawings. Search hits are loaded with some bibliographic data, and Espacenet drawing mosaics are displayed in enlarged images to allow users to view six patent drawings from the representative family member, rather than the typical single patent drawing.

Documents viewed with the Image display format.

• Family + Publication number list – The family data is displayed in text format, rather than the table. The family number (FN) appears above each record, but no other data is provided.
• Publication number + Kind Code list (PN + KD) – A simple list of every publication number, NOT organized by family. This list can be sorted by publication/priority date (as well as assignee, inventor, patent number, most cited, relevance, and family number), effectively de-organizing family groupings to create one massive, sort-able list of publication numbers. These numbers are not hyperlinked.
• Publication Number (PN) list – Same as above, but kind codes are not shown. These numbers are not hyperlinked.
• Priority Document (PR) list – A de-grouped list of only those priority document numbers associated with the records. Family and master patent numbers are not shown. These numbers are not hyperlinked.
• Application Number (AP) list – A de-grouped list of just those application numbers associated with the records. Family and master patent numbers are not shown. These numbers are not hyperlinked.
• International Classification (IC) list – a list of all IPC classifications associated with each record, sorted by only a blank line left between the list to designate a separation between two records. Family and master patent numbers are not shown. The numbers are hyperlinked to classification definitions.
• European Classification (EC) list – All ECLA classifications associated with the data set. No divisions between records are shown. The numbers are hyperlinked to classification definitions.
• US Classification (UC) list – A list of all the US classifications associated with the results set. No divisions between records are shown. The numbers are hyperlinked to classification definitions.
• Hits - As described in the Hit List section of this report, the Hits view was added in October 2011, and this display format allows the user to "view Full Text records ordered by the publications that retrieve the most hits for a given keyword search or highlighting scheme."^[1] Users can select the Hits view directly from the options beside each search query on the "View search history" page. The Hits view automatically sorts results by relevance (to the keyword search) and automatically displays the Hit Analysis tool for each family result. The Hit Analysis tool in the Hits view contains an interactive wheel and a chart displaying a breakdown of keywords per document and text section:^[2]

  The segments in the wheel are proportional to the number of keyword hits contained within the available full-text for a publication. Clicking on the pink arrow, if displayed will expand to display smaller segments of the wheel. Click on segments of interest in the wheel to drill down to the full-text for the relevant sections of the actual publication. Below the interactive wheel a tabular breakdown of the family and the number of occurrences of keywords within each publication section is displayed (within brackets). There is also a colour chart for your highlighting so that you can see clearly which words occur in which section of a publication.

  Users can view the aggregated bibliographic data for the record by selecting the "View biblio" icon, or users can view the full text sections of individual family documents, listed in the side menu below the "View biblio" and "Hit Analysis" icons. Users can navigate to the next result by selecting the "next" or "prev" links at the top of each record.

The Hits view, which by default displays the Hit Analysis tool for a record. The Hit Analysis tool in Hits view includes an interactive wheel illustrating the amount of keywords per document and text section.

• Custom – This option loads a user-defined customized display format. For example, if a user wishes to view only the title, abstract, image, assignee and first claim of each record in a hitlist, they may create a custom display containing only those data elements. The custom display is defined from PatBase’s Menu option in the floating toolbar, where the user selects "Custom display formats" in order to define and display up to five Custom Display formats.^[2] The Custom Display formats may incorporate any of the following fields: Title; Abstract; Drawing; Drawing Link; International class; Locarno class; US class; European class; Japanese classes; German class; Family information; Priority information; Backward Citations; Forward Citations; Number of Backward Citations; Number of Forward Citations; Assignee(s); Inventor(s); Designated states; Agents; All family claims; All family descriptions; Single publication claims; Single publication description; 1st main claim; Keyword in context (KWIC - for more information on the Keyword-In-Context display feature, see the next section of this article); Image; Custom User Fields; and Legal Status. Users can also define their country display preferences. For example, French-speaking users could now designate that they would like to see French (FR) patent abstracts first, European Patent Office (EP) documents second, WO/PCT documents third, and so on, so that patent text is more likely to be displayed in their preferred language.

  The screenshot below shows the Custom Display format menu, with checkboxes beside all available fields, a text box to enter preferred country codes, and four additional tabs to define a total of five Custom Display formats.

The Custom Display format menu.

These options present a range of different ways to view results sets, from the very detailed (Classic, Full) to the very cursory (the publication number report). Users can ensure their that favorite setting is automatically chosen every time they load search results by selecting one of these pre-defined views (or creating a custom view) from the “display options” section accessible through the "Menu" option on the floating toolbar.

Editor's Note:

The flexibility inherent in the different display choices is an advantage of the PatBase system. One comment about the custom display format: this option, while hypothetically empowering to the searcher, is still not as flexible as some users might like. For example, a user can include International Classification information in his record display. However, this means that all versions of IPC will automatically display for each record: there is no option to display, for example, “IPC-8 classes only.” Alternatively, imagine that a user is performing an infringement search for US art. With the customized display option, the user may choose to see claims for each record – but the user cannot specify that he or she is interested in US claims only (although she can define a country display preference for US documents, which will apply to "single publication claims" and "1st main claim" fields).

PatBase is continually updating their Custom Display Format options (for example, in July 2011 "Legal Status" was added as an available field to the Custom Display Format menu)^[1], so hopefully the flexible options mentioned above will one day be added to the Custom Display Format menu.