Viewing Results
What sets PatBase apart from other search engines is that patent records are always displayed as part of their larger patent family. This important characteristic gives a very different user experience and provides both important advantages and disadvantages in comparison to engines that display only individual documents. This feature also makes it difficult to empirically compare PatBase data coverage against other search engines, because an entire patent family, which may contain dozens of individual members, is counted as a single hit. Because family duplication is eliminated, the number of records in PatBase hit lists can sometimes appear artificially small against the number of patent documents that actually fit the query criteria.
The next sections will discuss the viewing features available in PatBase.
