Advanced Manual Searching provides the greatest flexibility for complex searches of the U.S. patent database. Unlike the Quick Search option, the Advanced Manual Search may employ several keywords, phrases, and expressions simultaneously. Advanced Manual Searching offers the same powerful search features available in the Quick Search, but the Advanced
option assumes the user is familiar with field designation codes,
nested Boolean strategies, and other advanced features. Assuming this
familiarity with advanced search techniques, the Advanced Manual Search search expects the searcher to input the correct syntax and command language for initiating an advanced feature. Although the Advanced Search assumes some knowledge on the part of the searcher, powerful search features can be combined in ways not possible in the Quick Search. The features supported in Advanced Manual Searching include (examples are from the USPTO website):
Nested Boolean Expressions
- Review the Boolean searching concepts in the Basic Patent Searching section of this tutorial.
It is possible to employ more than two search terms that use the Boolean operators (OR, AND, ANDNOT). Along with these operators, you can use parentheses to further clarify your search statement. In the absence of parentheses, all operators associate from left to right. - Example: needle ANDNOT ((record AND player) OR sewing) generates a list of hits that contain the word needle, but that does not contain any references to sewing. In addition, none of the hits would contain the combination of record AND player.
Field Searching
- Search
specific fields in patents by preceding your search term with the field
code, followed by a forward slash (/). If you do not select a specific
field, the text of the entire patent will be searched.
Example: IN/Dobbs will search for the word Dobbs within the Inventors Name field of the database. Occurrences of the search term anywhere else on the front page will be ignored. - Example: AN/MCNC AND TTL/solder mixes field searching with Boolean searching. This query would retrieve a list of hits which contain MCNC in the Assignee Name field, and the word solder in the Patent Title. Field names are associative. Using the search statement ttl/(nasal or nose) is the same as ttl/nasal or ttl/nose.
Phrase Searching
- A
group of words enclosed in quotation marks (") is treated as a single
search term. This allows you to search for a multi-word phrase.
- Example: AN/"General Motors" finds all occurrences of the phrase general motors within the Assignee Name field.
Date Range Searching
- You
can specify a range of dates you are interested in searching, as long
as the date ranges are qualified by either the Issue Date or
Application Date field code.
- Example: ISD/11/1/1997->5/12/1998 returns all patents in the database which were issued any day on or after Nov. 1, 1997, and before or on May. 12, 1998
Right Truncation
- This
feature allows you to use a wildcard on the right side of a search
term, to retrieve words that begin with a certain string. If you are
searching in a specific field, the string must be at least 3 characters
in length. If you are not searching in a specific field, the string
must be at least 4 characters in length. You cannot truncate within a
phrase that is enclosed in quotation marks.
- For example, searching AN/"general mot$" will result in an error.