Fiz Karlsruhe has released a new patent file on STN International: 36million patent families with 65million publications with one family comprises all patent applications pertaining to one invention
Fiz Karlsruhe has released the new bibliographic patent family file InpafamDB (International Patent Family Database) on STN International.
Data sources of InpafamDB are the EPO Patent Information Resource that currently covers 81 patent authorities, and the Inpadoc legal status file covering 51 authorities.
InpafamDB currently contains about 36 million patent families with 65 million publications dating back to the early 19th century.
The family data has been quality-improved by Fiz Karlsruhe.
A patent family comprises all worldwide patent publications belonging to one invention.
Thus it provides valuable insights, eg, as to where a particular invention is brought to market and in which countries the patent owner is active.
"As we index all publications of a patent family as one entity, and considering the broad worldwide coverage of 81 patent offices, InpafamDB is an excellent database for state of the art searches, but also for monitoring the market and the competitive environment.
"The information obtained is an excellent basis for strategic business decisions", says Claus-Dieter Siems, senior patent product manager at Fiz Karlsruhe.
"InpafamDB's design also provides maximum multi-file prior-art synergy with the Chemical Abstracts database CAplus and the Derwent World Patents Index on STN, the world's foremost value-add databases in the patent field".
Time coverage for the most important industrialised countries reaches back to the 19th century: USA (1836), GB (1840), D (1879), FR (1900), and Japan (1944).
With its coverage of 81 authorities and its invention-based search indexes, InpafamDB is especially useful for performing comprehensive prior - art searches in primary data using free-text (terms from titles and abstracts) and/or classifications (IPC, ECLA, ICO, IDT, and national classifications incl USA).
