Table of Contents
Detailed Instructions for Conducting Searches
1. Enter a Search Term in the Search Bar
3. Narrow Results with Additional Search Terms
6. Enter an Issue Date to Obtain Results in a Date Range
7. View the Application Results
9. Navigate the Application Display Panels
10. Adjust Page Magnification and View
11. Use the Adobe PDF Tool Bar
12. Make Comments
13. View and Use the Top Toolbar
14. Sort Results by Application Number
15. Sort Results by Issue Date
1. Enter Search Term(s) in the Search Bar
2. Enter Date Range if desired
3. Click Search or press Enter
4. View and Sort Search Results if Desired
5. Select and Click on desired Application Number
6. Click on desired page number with highlighted search results
7. Review text and drawings
8. Copy text and paste into word processing document if desired
9. Click Back to Search Results Button
10. Select and Click on another Application Number
Detailed Instructions follow …
Detailed Instructions for Conducting Searches
1. Enter a search term in the Search Bar
The first step is entering a search term in the search bar. For example, if you receive a rejection based on In re Owens, you may want to research how other design patent applicants have handled similar rejections. To search, type “In re Owens” in the search bar, leave the issue date empty, and click Search or return. Note: Since the search term contains more than one word, it should be placed in quotation marks.
2. Review Results
If the database of design patent applications contains the search terms, results will be obtained. In this example, a total of 385 results were obtained. The search terms are highlighted in yellow in the Results Summary.
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3. Narrow Results with Additional Search Terms
Results may be narrowed by entering additional search terms. For example, if your “In re Owens” issue concerns “new matter,” you can modify the search by adding additional search terms. For example, the search “(In re Owens) (new matter)”~30 will return just 22 results.
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Search Methods, including Boolean Operators, Proximity Searches, Fuzzy Searches, Wildcard Searches, and Grouping, are explained in the Search Methods section below.
4. View Items Per Page
The Items per page are shown at the bottom of the Search Results page. The default number is 50, but this can be changed.
To change the number, click on the down arrow and a pop-up box will appear.
Select the Items per page desired. If the applications returned on the search exceed the Items per page, then the arrows to the right may be used to navigate to the additional applications.
5. Search Methods
Conduct searches using single words or multiple words using search operators as follows:
Boolean Operators
AND – Example: patent AND functional will return documents containing both patent and functional.
OR – Example: patent OR functional will return documents containing either patent or functional.
NOT – Example: patent NOT functional will return documents containing patent but not functional.
Proximity Search
Proximity searches find terms that are near each other in a document. Insert a tilde “~” symbol at the end of words in quotation marks followed by the number of words that create the proximity boundary. For example, “patent functional”~10 will find the terms “patent” and “functional” within 10 words of each other in the document. You may also use parenthesis within the quotation marks. For example, “(broken lines) (new matter)”~20 will find the terms “broken lines” and “new matter” within 20 words of each other.
IMPORTANT: Do NOT cut and paste the quotation marks from another source document. Enter the quotation marks from your keyboard or the search may not work correctly.
Fuzzy Search
A fuzzy search finds matches in terms with a similar construction, expanding a term up to the maximum of 50 terms that meet the distance criteria of two or less.
To do a fuzzy search, use the tilde “~” symbol at the end of a single word with an optional parameter, a number between 0 and 2 (default), that specifies the edit distance. For example, “blue~” or “blue~1” would return “blue”, “blues”, and “glue”.
Fuzzy search can only be applied to terms, not phrases, but you can append the tilde to each term individually in a multi-part name or phrase. For example, “Unviersty~ of~ “Wshington~” would match on “University of Washington”.
Wildcard search
You can use generally recognized syntax for multiple (*) or single (?) character wildcard searches for prefix, infix, and suffix matching. For example, indefini* will return both indefinite and indefiniteness.
Grouping
You can use parentheses to create subqueries, including operators within the parenthetical statement. For example, Maatita AND (drawing OR figure) will search for documents containing the “Maatita” term and either “drawing” or “figure” (or both).
6. Enter an Issue Date to Obtain Results in a Date Range
To obtain results with a certain date range, enter an issue date.
Click on the Issue Date to obtain a drop-down menu.
Note: If nothing is entered in the Issue Date bar, the search results will default to All Time.
Most Recent will provide results from the last date design patent applications entered into the system were issued. Last 30 Days is self-explanatory.
Custom Range provides a pop-up calendar where you can enter a beginning date on first click and an ending date on second click.
7. View the Application Results
Search results are formatted into three columns. The first column is the application number. The second column is the issue date. The application numbers and issue dates can be sorted in ascending or descending order. Sorting is described in the Sorting Results section below.
The third column is the Results Summary. The Results Summary provides a listing of brief excerpts in the application where the search terms are found. The search terms are highlighted in yellow in the Results Summary.
8. View Application Documents
Clicking on the Application Number will bring up a three-panel Application Display. The left panel displays the Application Documents in PDF format. The middle panel can display either comments or thumbnails of the application pages. The right panel lists the pages where the highlighted search terms are found in the application documents.
9. Navigate the Application Display Panels
Clicking on a highlighted search term in the right panel will display the portion of the application containing the search term.
The entire paragraph where the search term is located will be highlighted.
Click on different highlighted search terms in the right panel to display different pages in the application documents. Note that occasionally the pages will be duplicated.
You may scroll through the application using four different methods. First, click on the application document and use the scroll wheel on your mouse (or fingers on a touch screen). Second, click and drag on the scroll bar to the right of the application document.
Third, click on the up down arrows in bottom portion of the middle panel.
Note: You can also jump to a page by entering the desired page in the page displayed box and hitting return.
Fourth, click on the thumbnail icon in the middle panel and a thumbnail page panel will appear. Use the scroll bar to scroll through the thumbnails. Clicking on a thumbnail will cause that page to appear in the application panel.
10. Adjust Page Magnification and View
Change the magnification and view of PDF documents using the tools at the bottom of the middle panel.
11. Use the Adobe PDF Tool Bar
The Adobe PDF Tool Bar is displayed to the left of the Application Document.
Clicking on the arrow will allow you to activate the selection or pan tool. Use the pan tool to move the document after it has been magnified.
Clicking on the comment bubble will allow you add comments or text comments.
Adding a comment will add a sticky comment to the application and open the middle comment panel. The comment will be appear as a User Annotation.
Adding a text comment will add text directly to the application. The font size and color of the text may be adjusted.
Words in the application may be highlighted, underlined, or stricken through.
Using the drawing tool, you may draw freehand on the application. The color and line width may be adjusted.
Use the eraser tool to erase lines drawn on the application.
Note: Comments, text comments, highlighting, underlining, strikethroughs, and lines will remain with the document if you download it or print it. They will not remain on the permanent document in the database.
12. Make Comments
As mentioned above, adding Sticky Comments will open the middle comment panel. Another way to open the middle comment panel is to click on the comment icon in the middle panel.
A comment bar will appear when the Comment Panel opens, and the Search Engine Highlights will appear.
Comments may be added in the comment bar. They will appear as sticky notes on the application documents and may be moved on the document.
Comments also may be added to the Search Engine Highlights. They will appear as a bubble on the upper left of the highlighted paragraph.
The Comments Panel may be closed by clicking the X to the left of Comments or by clicking the comments icon.
Comments may be edited, deleted, and replied to.
IMPORTANT: Added comments are not viewable by anyone else using the database and will only remain with the document if you download it or print it.
13. View and Use the Top Toolbar
The top toolbar contains an undo and redo icon where actions taken on the application document may be undone and redone.
The search icon may be used to search with the document. When the search bar appears, enter a search term and press enter. The term will be highlighted in red in the document. In this example, the term “Lilly” is used.
You may move between highlighted terms using the arrow keys.
Clicking the ellipsis
reveals the print and download panel.
The document search icon activates the Search Bar in the right panel. Entering a search term in this Search Bar replaces the original search. For example, the term “Lilly” can replace the terms “In re Owens” and the following results will be returned.
The entire paragraph containing the term Lilly will be highlighted in the Application.
Clicking the Back to Search Results button returns the Search Results screen where an additional Application Number may be clicked to view and additional application.
When the Search Results screen is displayed after clicking the “Back to Search Results” button, the original search terms will appear in the search bar, where you can modify them if desired.
IMPORTANT: When the Search Results screen is displayed after clicking the “Back to Search Results” button, the Search Results screen will default back to the most relevant results. It will not return to the last application you clicked on. We are working on an additional “Back to Search Results” button that will return the screen to the last application clicked on. For those working their way down a long list of application numbers, a work around is to open a “find” search bar in the browser and enter the number of the last application researched. Pressing enter or search will return the screen to the last application searched and you can then click on the next one in order. For example:
Step 1 – Click the Application Number, e.g., 29852337
Step 2 – View the results and conduct research
Step 3 – Before clicking the Back to Search Results button, copy the application number from above where the application PDF is displayed.
Step 4 – Click the Back to Search Results button.
Step 5 – Click find on the browser
Step 6 – Enter the application number in the find search bar
Step 7 – Click enter or return and the last application number will be highlighted.
Step 8 – Click on the next application down to continue research
14. Sort Results by Application Number
The results initially are sorted based on relevancy and number of search term hits, but the results may be sorted in ascending and descending order based on Application Number.
Initial Sort Order
Ascending Sort Order
Application Numbers are listed with the lowest on top and ascending in number as you scroll down. Hover mouse over Application # until up arrow appears and click.
The Application Numbers listed on the displayed items per page will be sorted in ascending sort order.
Descending Sort Order
Application Numbers are listed with the highest on top and descending in number as you scroll down. Hover mouse over Application # until down arrow appears and click.
The Application Numbers listed on the displayed items per page will be sorted in descending sort order.
IMPORTANT: Only the items listed will be sorted. For example, if there are 75 applications returned on the search and only 50 are listed on items per page, only 50 will be sorted.
IMPORTANT: After viewing an application and clicking the “Back to Search Results” button, the applications no longer will be sorted. You will need to resort by clicking the arrow up or arrow down button.
15. Sort Results by Issue Date
The Issue Dates are first displayed by relevancy of the search results, but the applications may be sorted in ascending and descending order based on Issue Date.
Ascending Sort Order
Issue Dates are listed with the earliest on top and ascending in date as you scroll down. Hover mouse over Issue Date until up arrow appears and click.
The Issue Dates listed on the displayed items per page will be sorted in ascending sort order.
Descending Sort Order
Issue Dates are listed with latest on top and descending in date as you scroll down. Hover mouse over Issue Date until down arrow appears and click.
The Application Numbers listed on the displayed items per page will be sorted in descending sort order.
16. Copy and Pasting Text
All documents have undergone optical character recognition (OCR) and the text may be cut and pasted into word processing documents.
To copy and paste, place the cursor at the beginning of the text you wish to copy and drag to include all desired text. Release the mouse and a pop-up box will appear.
The pop-up box may be used to copy text, add a comment, highlight, underline, or strike out.
Note: Text in paragraphs with highlighting from the search cannot be copied without first removing the highlighting from the text. To remove the highlighting, click on the highlighted paragraph and a pop-up box will appear.
Click the trash can and the highlighting will disappear. The text now may be copied and pasted. To highlight the text again, click the undo button.
The pop-up box also can be used to change the color of the highlighting and to add a comment to the paragraph.
Note: Another method of copying text with highlighting without removing the highlighting mask is to place the cursor on text outside the yellow highlighting mask and drag across the highlighted text.
Please note this post is for general informational purposes only. It is not legal advice and does not create an attorney client relationship.
