Report:Thomson Innovation/Search Interface/The Search Forms/Non Latin Text Search

Non-Latin Text Search

Along with offering original Japanese-language collections of Japanese patents, Thomson Innovation has released a new search form that must be used to search this collection with Japanese language keyword queries. Although the search form itself may be viewed in Japanese or English (as can the rest of Thomson Innovation), all keyword queries entered into this form must be in Japanese, and will only query the native-language Japanese patent collection. The only exception is that Country Codes and Kind Codes are searched and retrieved in Latin/Roman (English) characters and Arabic numbers (including dates) are used in both search and retrieval of numbers.^[1]

After the release of the native Japanese search form, there were still a few bugs to be worked out. Users should check the Thomson Innovation help guide for the most current updates on these bugs, although many of these issues have since been resolved, as of Release 3.5 in August 2012.^[2] For example, as of the August 2012 release, the following issues with Native Japanese Patent Searching were resolved:^[2]

• In the IPC, F Term, FI Code, and FI Facet search aids (browse tools), small katakana are now being displayed as expected.
• You may now search the Examination and Registration fields (and appropriate subfields) using YYYYMM and YYYY formats without using wildcards.
• Searching applicants now works as expected without including a company’s “corporate entity,” e.g., 株式会社 (Ltd.). The corporate entity portions of the applicant now act as stop words.
• You may now use wildcards to search country codes in priority numbers.

The following enhancements were also added to the Native Japanese Patent Search interface, as of August 2012:^[2]

• Final Date of Duration Field Added - The Final Date of Duration (FDD) field is now available as a subfield of Registration and Post Registration in Native Japanese patent search. This field allows searching on future dates, as the date may be set in advance.
• Search Legal Status for Available Data - The legal status fields and subfields (Examination, Registration and Post Registration, Trial and Appeal) now allow you to search for any records with available data.
• Additional Filter Fields - You can now filter the Native Japanese patent search result sets on the following fields: Priority Year, Application Year, FI Code, FI 4 Char Code, F-Term Full Code

The native-Japanese search includes three search forms: Fielded, Publication Number, and Expert. These three forms are very similar in function to the English-language forms described in the Structured (Fielded), Number, and Expert search forms described in this report.

Native Japanese Fielded Search

Native Japanese Publication Number Search

Native Japanese Expert Search

Queries in these search forms are restricted to a approximately 30,000 characters. In the Publication Number search form, about 1800 document numbers can be queried (which corresponds to around 30,000 characters) if Result Set or Work File output are selected. When Document Copies is selected, the maximum is 500, and for the File History option, the maximum is 25.^[1]

The following fields were searchable in the native Japanese collection as of August 2012, with some fields only available through the Expert version of the search form:^[1]

*Available only on the Expert search form

The Examination, Trial and Appeal, and Registration/Post-Registration Legal Status fields are only available in the native-language Japanese patent collections. To learn more about these fields, see the Searchable Datafields section of this report.

As of August 2012, the following features/functions are not available with Native Japanese Patent Search at this time:^[1]

• Highlighting
• The Native Japanese Patent collections cannot be cross-searched with other content sets/collections
• Native Japanese Patent searches can be combined and merged among themselves but cannot be combined or merged with searches from other content sets/collections
• Corporate Tree assignee searching
• Field Weighting
• Stemming
• Stacking of searches in the Expert mode
• Quick Search (the Quick Search feature is still available, but the Native Japanese collections cannot be searched through it)
• Preferences for Search, Result Set, Record View, and Exports & Reports are not available (but General Preferences are still available)
• Citation Mapping
• Family searching and citation searching
• Marked List
• ThemeScape
• Text Clustering

According to the Thomson help file, DWPI fields are not searchable in conjunction with Native Japanese Patent data, but DWPI is integrated with Native Japanese Patent data in result sets and record views. DWPI fields are also available for Exports & Reports and printing.

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3} "Native Japanese Patent Searching." Thomson Innovation website, http://www.thomsoninnovation.com/tip-innovation/support/help/search_njp.htm. Accessed September 10, 2012.
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1 2.2} "Release Notes." Thomson Innovation website, http://www.thomsoninnovation.com/tip-innovation/support/help/release_notes.htm. Accessed September 10, 2012.