Searching patents and applications in Orbit Intelligence can be done in 3 different databases, also known as 'collections', to align with your searching strategies.

Here find a quick video "Gain time by chosing the right collection for your patent search"

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Collection selection from the advanced search 
• FAMPAT: 1 record = 1 family
• FULLPAT: 1 record = 1 procedure
• FULLTEXT: 1 record = 1 document

Collection selection from the advanced search form

FAMPAT: 1 record = 1 family = 1 invention

It is the most 'important' and default database.

When do I use FAMPAT database ?

- Whenever a global/worlwide view of a technology, portfolio or company (Patentability, Patent Landscape) is needed 

- When there is a need to reduce the duplication inherent in the extension of family members into other countries (competitive intelligence).

• World patents (full text & bibliographic data) grouped by invention-based families 
• Data is shown at the family level
• Each family record gathers patent equivalents as they are published in the various countries of extension 

N.B. the red rectangle above represents the content of an entire FAMPAT record: it includes all related applications, search reports and grants in all countries and jurisdictions. 

Structure: 

FAMPAT includes the treatments and information added within the FULLPAT database, such as:

            Treatments:

• Normalization of Assignee names
• Semantic extraction of concepts
• Automatic creation of a "Key content" field including an "object of the invention", the "advantages vs drawbacks" and "independent claims". These fields are searchable and are shown in the Key content tab. The tab can be displayed to increase efficiency when reviewing patent search results.
• Patents can be assigned to a parent company based on normalized assignee data

            Information::

• Matching the publication with the corresponding legal status (Inpadoc or direct feed from the Patent office)
• Citations data
• Litigation and opposition data
• Standard essential patent identification
• Reassignment data
• Licensing agreements
• US file wrappers

FAMPAT also includes additional treatments:

• Creation of patent families along with the addition of new family members as they become known, for more detail refer to the article: FAMPAT family construction rules
• Calculation of a family legal status
• Calculation of patent metrics (Patent value, Market strategy, Technical impact, Patent strength)

The FAMPAT and FULLPAT databases updates are over on Sunday, to include the previous week updates/new information as provided by the (inter)national patent offices.

FULLPAT: 1 record = 1 application

When do I use FULLPAT database ?

FULLPAT is convenient to perform searches limited to specific countries (eg: Freedom To Operate search in the US).

> You will limit the results to the procedures in this/these jurisdictions.

• World patents (full text & bibliographic data) are displayed by individual country
• Data is shown at the Patent Level
• Each patent will have a record at all stages of publication
  

N.B. the graphic shown above illustrates the notion that the red rectangle shows one FULLPAT record that encompasses the related records including the application, search report and the grant in one country or jurisdiction.

Structure: the FULLPAT database combines the data published by the patent offices and additional value added treatment and information. The database is updated every Sunday with all the data published the week before by patent offices. 

The treatments applied to FULLPAT are the following:

• Normalization of Assignee names
• Semantic extraction of concepts
• Automatic creation of a "Key content" field including an "object of the invention", the "advantages vs drawbacks" and "independent claims". These fields are searchable and are shown in the Key content tab. The tab can be displayed to increase efficiency when reviewing patent search results.
• Patents can be assigned to a parent company based on normalized assignee data

The information added to each patent in FULLPAT includes the following:

• Matching the publication with the corresponding legal status (Inpadoc or direct feed from the Patent office)
• Citations data
• Litigation and opposition data
• Standard essential patent identification
• Reassignment data
• Licensing agreements
• US file wrappers

FULLTEXT: 1 record = 1 published document

When do I use FULLTEXT database ?

The FULLTEXT database is loaded as soon as we receive data from the (inter)national offices (days differ following the offices). Some patent authorities publish several databases at different week days, like granted patents on Tuesday and applications-only on Thursday.

The FULLTEXT database is convenient when you have to count publication stages, or when you have to focus your search on a precise type of document like granted patents in US.

• Authorities are displayed by individual country 
• Data is shown at the Publication level
• Each stage of publication of the same patent will have a record in the database.

N.B. Each red rectangle above shows a different FULLTEXT record - although the records are related (one is an application and the other is the grant), in Fulltext they will give 2 results.

Structure: The FULLTEXT database is comprised of the "raw" data received from the patent offices. Only few processing, such as English machine translation and bibliographic information standardization, are done in order to push the data online as fast as possible. 

You can run your search on the entire FULLTEXT database, or use the filter and define which countries and document types to use: 

Nota: Document type here is not exactly aligned with patent kind codes. For instance, US granted patents before 2001-04-15 were published with kind code A (see our coverage page), however they are included behind the option "US from 1971 - B" here above, related to their status "granted" at that time.