Help Searching the Patents Journal

To begin your Patents Journal search, first select which publication week(s) or journal(s) you wish to search in and view details for by selecting the dates and journal numbers in the From and To drop down boxes. There are several ways to refine your Patents Journal search.

Basic refining

You can search for specific details within a journal or range of journals, such as an application number, name, word or phrase, by entering text into the Refine text box.

For example, you could search for all entries in a range of journals that contain the word engine. You will note that searching for the word engine produces results that contain the words engine, engineering, engines etc. This is the default search behaviour for the Patents Journal. However, if you would like to find entries that contain only an exact match to engine, you should type this into the Refine text box using quotation marks, i.e. “engine”.

Quotation marks are also required if you wish to include reserved characters in your search, for example a / within an SPC number, i.e. “SPC/GB02/005”.

All matches to your refinement are highlighted in yellow and are retained across all tabs, allowing you to move from tab to tab to view all results. Tabs containing results for your refinement will have their headings lit up in white.

To clear your refinements, delete the text in the Refine box and click the Submit button. To reset all entries and return to the current week, click the Reset button.

Refine using wildcards

The Patents Journal supports wildcard searching.

A star (*) represents multiple characters, so to search for all application numbers that begin with GB080 for example, you should type GB080* into the Refine text box. For for all application numbers that begin GB080 and end in 1, enter GB080*1.

A question mark represents a single character, so to search for both spellings of the word tyre (tire), use a question mark as such t?re.

Refine using Boolean Search Operators

It is possible to refine your search further using the Boolean expressions AND, NOT, OR, EOR or XOR. Note that these expressions must be entered in capital letters.

For example, typing engine AND lubrication into the Refine text box will return all results that contain the terms engine and lubrication.

EOR and XOR both perform a “logical exclusive OR”. In other words, only one of the terms is permitted to appear in each result, so a search for oil XOR lubrication will return results that contain the term oil or lubrication, but not both. EOR works in exactly the same way.

More complex queries can be built up using bracketed expressions, e.g. engine AND (oil XOR lubrication) NOT (diesel OR aircraft).

Refine using Proximity Search Operators

You can also refine your Patents Journal search using the following Proximity Search Operators :-

BEFORE, AFTER, NEARn, DNEARn (Directed NEAR) and XNEARn (eXact NEAR).  n represents the number of words of separation between the two terms, where a value of 1 would mean the terms are adjacent to each other. If not specified, n defaults to 5. Note again that these operators must be entered in capital letters.

Directed NEAR only returns results where the second term is within n words of the first term, in the specified order.  For example, "engine" DNEAR3 oil will find all results in which the exact term engine is followed by oil not more than three words away.

The eXact NEAR operator will only return results where the second term is exactly n words from the first term. For example, with the query engine XNEAR2 oil, the only results returned are where the term oil follows the term engine and is exactly two words away from the term engine.

If you have any queries regarding the Patents Journal, our Information Centre is open 9am - 5pm (UK time). Telephone 0300 300 2000 or for Outside the UK+44 (0)1633 814000.