TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Generalities about number search
- Smart number search
- Upload a file to search numbers in batch
- Video presentation
Generalities about number search
Number search is probably the second most frequent search in Orbit Intelligence. However, to identify patents by their numbers is not trivia; each office produces publication, application and priority numbers with its own format. And the situation is not standardised on cited patents data.
Even publication numbers may not be unique among the same patent office. The Number Search intends to help our clients by reformatting user's input, based on our know-how of most commonly used number formats, and ideally match our standardised patent numbers (publications, applications or priorities).
If you have to export patent numbers to search them afterwards, still in Orbit Intelligence, we recommend to use XPN, XAP or XPR - defitions are located in the Fields library.
Smart number search
Numbers can be typed or copy-pasted separated by a space, a comma, a semi-colon, or a paragraph break. If no country code is entered, the system will retrieve every matching patent number regardless of the patent office.
Five options are available in the drop-down menu. If you select "Any patent number", please note this will generate necessary false-positive results.
When the option 'Smart number search' is selected, the user may preview the results via the “Results summary” window and decide which numbers to include in the final hitlist by checking/unchecking the respective boxes.
Please note that the Smart Number Search is not available for more than 1,000 numbers searched; intermediary interface (see below) will be skipped and you will be redirected to the hitlist page directly.
Thus 2 or more hits could be found with the same number input.
The search field used is XPN (Standardized Publication Number).
When the option 'Search only exact matched' is selected, the system searches for the numbers as they are without formatting review. For Publication Numbers the field PN is taken into consideration.
Upload a file to search numbers in batch
Import numbers by uploading a file from your computer, four document extensions are supported: TXT, CSV, XLS and XLSX.
Uploaded file must stay simple, as the importer will only take the first sheet of Excel files. We recommend to forge a specific file for this purpose (Excel file, one sheet, one column).
Report file
Once your number search by uploading file, has ended, Orbit Intelligence will produce a search report - an Excel file - in return.
For instance, a typical import may run as the following :
- 1000 numbers/lines in the uploaded file
- 1171 numbers searched, the reformating assistance worked as planned: 1 input, 2 or 3 number could appear in return
- 63 invalids: those numbers do not fit with any known formatting rules, and the search has ignored them as they will obviously produce 0 result
- KO: this numbers, reformated or not, do not match a patent in our database
- OK: we have one or several matches with this number
We kindly suggest to review the search report with attention, and check the lines "invalid" and "KO". These numbers require a specific attention as they may have been found with a different format, or hit a record already found by another patent member of a family.
Video presentation
Watch this video to learn how to import patent documents into Orbit Intelligence:
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