Enhanced English-language information has been enhanced with bibliographic data from the European Patent Office's Inpadoc records
Fiz Karlsruhe, the European service centre of STN International, a provider of online scientific and technical information, has recently made available an improved version of the Japio patent database.
The new version of the file has been enhanced with bibliographic data from the European Patent Office's Inpadoc records, and many records now include images from the front page of patent documents.
Other improvements include the availability of simultaneous left and right truncation (Slart) on the basic index, and the re-building of the record accession number (AN) from the original patent number.
As a result of these new features, patent searchers will be able to pinpoint relevant patent documents more effectively and efficiently and, - by viewing the associated images, in Tiff format - assess their relevance more quickly.
The images can be viewed directly on the screen during an STN on the web session, or captured for later viewing using any program that handles Tiff and Jpeg images compressed in Group 4 fax format, including STN's proprietary search software, STN Express.
Produced by the Japanese Patent Office, Japio (Japan Patent Information Organisation database) is the online version of the Paj (Patent Abstracts of Japan) CD-Roms.
As such, it provides the most comprehensive English-language access to Japanese unexamined patent applications (Kokai Tokkyo Koho) available, and covers all technologies.
Japio records contain assignee data, publication information, International Patent Classification codes, as well as a title and abstract in English.
Abstracts are available for all applications originating in Japan, and for foreign applications since 1989.
Coverage starts from October 1976 to the present, and currently consists of over 6 million records.
The additional Inpadoc data extends from April 1973 to December 1997, and amounts to around 1.6 million records.
In total there are some 7.7 million records, and more than 5 million images.
The database is updated monthly, with around 25,000 new records added each time.
Automatic current-awareness searches (SDIs) are also available on a monthly basis.
