Glossary

Abstract
The patent abstract is a brief summary of the invention and its use. The search alias for the abstract is AB:().

Alerts
You can set alerts to notify you when there is a change in a query in your history, or when individual documents are updated. 
The system automatically keeps you up to date when new content is added to our data collection. For example, when new documents match the query, new family members are added, the legal status of a document is changed, citing information is updated or there is a change in assignee(s) etc.

Application
An application is a filed request pending at a patent authority for the patent prosecution of the invention described and claimed by that application. Once published the filed application remains online regardless of whether it is subsequently granted, denied or withdrawn. Upon filing applications receive a number that starts with the two-letter authority code. 
The search alias for application authority is "AC:()".

Application Date
The application date is the date a patent application is filed at the authority, also known as the filing date.
The search alias for application date is "AD:()".

Application Number
The application number is the number assigned to a patent application when it is filed at the authority. TotalPatent One® standardizes the raw application numbers as delivered by suppliers in a standardized format close to the format currently used by the authority. The search alias for application number is "AN:()".

Assignee
The patent assignee is the person the patent was assigned to (granted). The original assignee of a patent is the legal person who applied for a patent, also known as the "applicant" for some authorities. The assignment of a patent can change over time, e.g. through sale or donation. The current assignee of a patent is the entity currently holding the property rights to a patent.
Note: Not all authorities keep track of changes in ownership.
The search alias for assignee is "PA:()".
The search alias for current assignee is "PACU:()".

Authority
A patent authority is the organization processes a patent application for their designated geographical area (country or region). A full list of all IP offices and their jurisdiction can be found on the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) website. TotalPatent One® contains patent information from 100+ authorities. You can rank your preferred authorities in the user preferences.

List of authorities that you can rank as your preferred authority. The search alias for authority is "PC:()".

Citations
A backward citation is a reference to a relevant older document found in the public domain during the examination of a patent application by the examiner. These can be reported by the applicant in the application itself, or by the patent examiner in the search report. Both patent documents and non-patent literature documents can be cited. Non-patent documents may contain external Scopus® links.

A forward citation is when a granted patent is cited by later filed patents. A citation to a patent is identified by describing the source and typically contains information about the journal, the author, the location and dates, and sometimes an internal ID number assigned by the examiner. Depending on the authority, citations are classified based on their relevance. For example, an EPO X citation is considered of the highest possible relevance. Some authorities include a code to identify the source of the citation.

TotalPatent One® standardizes the raw citation numbers delivered by suppliers to a number format as used by the patent offices. By default, the application searches for the standardized format of numbers.
The search alias for cited authority "CTC:()".
The search alias for citation number "CTN:()".
The search alias for NPL citation "NPC:()".
The search alias for NPL citation origin "NPCO:()".

Claims
Claims are the part of a patent that define the legally protected scope of an invention. The first (or main) claim defines the invention in its broadest form by including its essential technical features. Additional features of the invention are defined by further claims. All claims together describe the full scope of  protection of the document.
The search alias for all claims is "CLM:()".
The search alias for first claim statements is "CLM1:()".

Classification
A patent classification is a system designed to alphanumerically correlate patents according to their technical content. It allows you to search for patents and applications describing similar inventions and enables searching in alphanumeric language. Technology progresses continuously, causing the administrative bodies of the classification systems to adapt and create new classes when necessary. In such cases, patent offices will retrospectively reclassify back file documents When documents are re-classified we do not keep the historical classification numbers in our database. We only show the most recent classification information as delivered by the responsible authority. Classification systems are adhered to across regions, there are multiple ones in use including the following:

Supported classification systems
The search alias for CPC classification is "CPC:()".
The search alias for IPC classification is "IPC:()".
The search alias for Locarno classification is "LOC:()".
The search alias for FI classification is "FIC:()".
The search alias for F-term classification is "FTC:()".
The search alias for US classification is "USC:()".

Complete Family
The complete family consists of a set of documents filed in multiple countries that are directly or indirectly linked to one root document. The family relation is based on the priority numbers. Each complete family consists of one or more main families. 

The relation between the documents in the example is as follows:
• A shared application/priority number EP 001 between EP100..., DE 200..., JP 300... and CN 400...
• A shared application/priority number US 005 between JP 300..., CN 400... and US 500...

Note: The family definitions in TotalPatent One® is different from the definitions used by EPO/INPADOC. As each vendor/authority determines their own family relations, families cannot be compared between vendors/authorities, not even if they share a common name.

Current Assignee
The current assignee of a patent is the legal person who currently holds the property rights to a patent according to the input received from the authority. This may or may not be the original assignee. The assignment of a patent can change over time; as a patent is considered property, it can be traded as such.
The search alias for current assignee is "PACU:()".

Description
The description is a detailed technical disclosure (possibly containing figures), a part of the patent specification.
The search alias for the description is DSC:().

Domestic Family

The domestic family consists of all subsequent publications of the same application within the same authority. The family relation is based on the application number. The above example shows two  domestic families. Note: The family definitions in TotalPatent One® is different from the definitions used by EPO/INPADOC. As each vendor/authority determines their own family relations, families cannot be compared between vendors/authorities, not even if they share a common name.

Equivalent
An equivalent is defined as a document that has exactly the same priorities as another document. Since there are many patent authorities, the same invention can be the subject of a number of patents worldwide. Also some authorities require the application to be filled in multiple languages, for example the EPO requires patent applications to be filed in English, French and German. These are also equivalents.

There are two reasons you will find equivalent document information in TotalPatent One®:

1 . When no translation in English exists of a document (in Norwegian, for example), but an equivalent document with the same priorities filed in English at the USPTO does exist TotalPatent One® will show the equivalent information in the document view.
2 . When (for example) a Chinese patent is not yet translated, and an equivalent document filed at EPO is available in English, TotalPatent One® will display the equivalent English information in the document view.
When the information displayed in the document view originates from an equivalent source it will be clearly marked as equivalent.

Exemplary Claim
An exemplary claim or embodiment is a specific type of claim, but not necessarily an example limiting the scope of that claim. For example a patent document can contain information on a new pesticide used in the cultivation of cabbages. The exemplary claim could make a claim for use of that pesticide used when growing cauliflower. The example of the use in combination with cauliflower does not limit the scope of the main claim; that it is useful for all types of cabbage.
The search alias for exemplary claims is "CLME:()".

Extended Family

The extended family consists of a set of patent documents filed in multiple countries that are directly or indirectly linked to one root document. Like the complete family, the relation is based on a shared priority number extended with other related documents, such as a continuation-in-part or divisional. As you can see in the example above each extended family consists of one or more main families, in this case there are five. The relation between the documents in the example is as follows:

• A shared application/priority number EP 001 between EP100..., DE 200..., JP 300... and CN 400...
• A shared application/priority number US 005 between JP 300..., CN 400... and US 500...
• A shared related pub number/application number US 006 between US 500... and US 600 A1
• A shared related pub number/application number US 007 between US 600 A1 and US 700 A1

Even though document US 700 A1 is not related to EP 100 A2 via any shared number in the documents, they are indirectly linked and part of one and the same extended family (via documents US 600 A1, US 500..., CN 400... (and JP 300...). 
Note: The family definitions in TotalPatent One® is different from the definitions used by EPO/INPADOC. As each vendor/authority determines their own family relations, families cannot be compared between vendors/authorities, not even if they share a common name. 

Family
LexisNexis® defines a family as a set of related patent applications or granted patents to protect a single invention made by common inventor(s). However, there are no globally accepted rules to define a family of patents. Patent database vendors can apply different sets of rules to construct families, and each is based on the concept of shared reference numbers. In TotalPatent One®, there are 4 types of families defined:
• Domestic Family 
• Main Family 
• Complete Family 
• Extended Family 

Note: The family definitions in TotalPatent One® is different from the definitions used by EPO/INPADOC. As each vendor/authority determines their own family relations, families cannot be compared between vendors/authorities, not even if they share a common name. 

In TotalPatent One®, each (extended) family receives a Family ID. This Family ID covers all types of related family (domestic, main, complete and extended) and can be used to search (save and export) all family members at once. The Family ID can be found in the XML export of a document.

The search alias for Family IDs is "FID:".

Filing Date
See Application Date

Further Classification
Other relevant classes are marked as further classification.
The search alias for further CPC classification is "CPCF:()".
The search alias for further IPC classification is "IPCF:()".
The search alias for further USC classification is "USCF:()".
The search alias for further FI classification is "FICF:()".

Independent Claim
An independent claim is a claim that does not refer to (i.e. is not "dependent" on) any other claim. The search alias for independent claims is "CLMI:()".

Inventor
An inventor is a person named in the patent document, it connotes having contributed to the creation of the invention. The search alias for inventor is "IN:()".

Kind Code
During the prosecution of a patent application a number of documents are published (e.g. the application, a search report, the publication etc.) To distinguish between the types of documents the document kind code is included in the document number. Each authority is entitled to use their own kind codes but most follow the same basic WIPO recommendations of a letter code for the group of documents followed by a one digit numerical code describing the type of document.
 

EPO kind code examples
Kind code can also be referred to as "Publication Kind".
The search alias for kind code is "PK:()".

Language Code
The language code is a two-letter code according to the ISO639-1 standard to be used in search queries to determine the search language. As some authorities allow applications in multiple languages it can occur that documents in our database are in a different language from the language spoken in that country. For example, the Swedish PRV office accepts filings where: "The description, claims and abstract of a patent application must be written in Swedish or English. Text other than description, claims and abstract may be written in Swedish, English, Danish or Norwegian, German or French". This can explain anomalies in the data where you find unexpected results from a query that includes the language code. When interested in a specific authority, always include the authority code as well.

The default language for the search results in TotalPatent One® is English (EN). When no original (human translated) version of the document exists in English, we use machine translation for a number of languages (see table below). When no translation is available the English equivalent document information is used. Both machine translated and equivalent items are clearly marked in the document view. The result is a near complete coverage of items search-able in English.

EXAMPLE: A search for all documents that contain the English word "Titanium" in their abstract ( AB.EN: (Titanium) ) will show a mix of; original, human translated, machine translated and equivalent documents, all containing "Titanium" in their abstract. The first line shows a Japanese document. When you open this document you'll see the machine translated English title and equivalent abstract. Without the equivalent you would not have found this result.


In addition to machine translation to English, machine translation is also available in Chinese and Japanese. For these languages, TotalPatent One® translates the title, abstract and first claim. 
 

Legal Representative
Patent prosecution is a highly specialized task in which most applicants utilize a patent attorney or registered patent agent. They are referred to as the legal representative. 
The search alias for legal representative is "AG:()".

LexisNexis®
LexisNexis® is a leading global provider of content-enabled work flow solutions designed specifically for professionals in the legal, risk management, corporate, government, law enforcement, accounting, and academic markets. LexisNexis originally pioneered online information with its Lexis® and Nexis® services. LexisNexis® is part of RELX Group and serves customers in more than 175 countries with more than 10,000 employees worldwide.

Machine Translation
When a document is published by a patent office and is added to our database often only a version in the original language is available. In order to be able to do cross-authority searching in a single language documents need to be translated. In TotalPatent One® we translate title, abstract, claims and description into English.

TotalPatent One® clearly marks all machine translations to distinguish them from the original text or available human translation. When the patent office publishes a translated version of the document we will upload this translation to the database. 

• Caution: Machine-translated texts (may contain mistranslations, omissions or additions) cannot be considered equal to human-translated texts, and must not be used for legal purposes.
• Attention: LexisNexis® and/or affiliates shall not be liable in respect of any losses, direct, indirect or consequential, arising out of your interpretation of our machine translations. This disclaimer shall not limit our liabilities in any way that is not permitted under applicable law; or exclude any of our liabilities that may not be excluded under applicable law.

Main Classification
Most classification systems define the main classification as the most suitable classification for the invention to be identified by the patent office.
The search alias for CPC main classification is "CPCM:()".
The search alias for IPC main classification is "IPCM:()".
The search alias for USC main classification is "USCM:()".
The search alias for FI main classification is "FICM:()".

Main Family

The main family consists of a set of documents filed in multiple countries to protect a single invention by a common inventor(s). In a main family all documents have exactly the same priority or combination of priorities. For documents without a priority number (first filing), the application number is read as the priority number. In the example above there are two main families. The first group has a shared application / priority number (EP 001) and the second group has a shared combination of priority numbers (EP 001 and US 005). Even though they share a priority number (EP 001) these documents do not belong to one and the same main family. As you can see each main family consists of one or more domestic families, in this example there are four.
Note: The family definitions in TotalPatent One® is different from the definitions used by EPO/ INPADOC. As each vendor/authority determines their own family relations, families cannot be compared between vendors/authorities, not even if they share a common name.

Normalized Assignee
Through a semi-automated selection process, the Standardized names are grouped based on the highest-level company name.
Example: The Standardized names IBM CORPORATION, IBM DEUTSCHLAND INTERNATIONAL BUERO MASCHINEN, and INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES are grouped under the normalized name IBM.

Note: Name standardization and normalization is available for Latin-based alphabets only.

The search alias for normalized assignee is "PAN:()".

Object Search
An object in a database is a data structure to store or reference data. An object search is a specific query targeting only specific object(s), for example a search on document titles ( TI:() ) or Inventor(s) ( IN:() ), etc.
When we refer to an object search in this manual we mean the guided search using predefined objects, you can select an object from a list and include it in your query. Multiple objects can be selected separated by operators (AND/OR/NOT) to build a more complex search. This way, a user does not require in-depth knowledge of the search syntax.

OCR
Text elements in the document view marked as "OCR" (optical character recognition) are created using the following automated process: the originally published document is only available as an image which is scanned, and the machine-readable text is created from the scanned document. As the OCR-method is not fully reliable, make sure that you carefully examine the original text of the document. TotalPatent One® applies OCR to be able to use text search queries.

Original Assignee
The original assignee of a patent is the legal person who the property rights were granted to for the first time. This may or may not be the inventor (who is the person who made the discovery) and/or the current holder of the property rights.
The search alias for original assignee is "PA:()".

Orange Book
Orange Book is a list of safe and effective drug products admitted to the US market by the United States Food and Drug Administration.

Paris Convention
To solve the conflicts of receiving several applications (by different authorities from different inventors) for the same or similar patents at the same time, the "Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property" of 1883 agreed upon a system of priority patent filing, which is still in force. The Paris  Convention defined priority right in the following paragraphs:

• Article 4A : "Any person who has duly filed an application for a patent, or for the registration of a utility model, or of an industrial design, or of a trademark, in one of the countries of the Union, or his successor in title, shall enjoy, for the purpose of filing in the other countries, a right of priority during the periods hereinafter fixed."
• Article 4B: "Consequently, any subsequent filing in any of the other countries of the Union before the expiration of the periods referred to above shall not be invalidated by reason of any acts accomplished in the interval, in particular, another filing, the publication or exploitation of the invention, the putting on sale of copies of the design, or the use of the mark, and such acts cannot give rise to any third–party right or any right of personal possession."

Priority
The right to claim priority gives the inventor the chance to apply for a patent on the same invention in multiple countries that ratified the Paris convention. The assignee of an application filed at a member state has the right to file the same invention at other member states during the 12 month period after the first application date. A useful thing, as it obviates the need to file the application with all patent authorities at the same time. The rights obtained if the application is granted will start at the filing date of the first filing, i.e. the priority document. For more information, see the following entries:

• Priority Date 
• Priority Number 
• Paris Convention 

Priority Date
The priority date is the first filing date of an application at any member of the Paris Convention that has priority over other filings.

Note: One document can have multiple priority dates due to for example provisional applications. So when you are searching for documents based on priority dates, your results list will possibly display dates that are outside the query specifications. The results list shows only the earliest priority date for each  document. If you open the original PDF, you can see that the priority date you are specifically searching for is part of the array of priority information in the document.
The search alias for priority date is "PRD:()".

Priority Number
The priority number is the number of the application in respect of which priority is claimed, i.e. it is the same as the application number of the claimed priority document. TotalPatent One® standardizes the raw priority numbers as delivered by suppliers in a standardized format close to the format currently used by the authority. By default, the tool searches in this Standardized Numbers.
The search alias for priority number is "PRN:()".

Publication Kind
See Kind Code. .
The search alias for publication kind is "PK:()".

Standardized Assignee
No general rules exist for the entry of names into patent documents, so the same company (or personal) name can exist in various forms in terms of spelling. For this reason, assignee searches may return incomplete result sets. To ensure you find the documents you seek, TotalPatent One® groups documents by assignee name using the following two levels of grouping:

1 . The standardized name - names corrected for variations in spelling, punctuation, diacritics, legal entities, and so forth.
2 . The normalized name - names grouped on the highest level company name. To standardize assignees, TotalPatent One® begins with the original assignee names, exactly as they were published. For each name, TotalPatent One® applies a set of rules to reduce the number of variations.

Example: The names International Business Machines Corporation, International Business Machines Corp., INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORP., ARMONK, NY, USA, and INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORP., ARMONK, N.Y. (V.ST.A.) are standardized to INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES.

Note: Name standardization and normalization is available for Latin-based alphabets only. The search alias for standardized assignee is "PAS:()".

Note: Phrase searching applies stemming to find results for e.g., misspelled words. For more information on stemming, see Stemming.

Standardized Numbers
Each patent authority has their own unique way of numbering documents. The number format is defined by each patent authority and can also change over time. To index and search in this collection of data and create family relations, we normalize the raw numbers to a standardized format. 

The standardized number formats are created to resemble the original format as closely as possible. TotalPatent One® displays the already standardized numbers, and the raw data is present in the original documents.
The standardization of numbers requires the removal of foreign characters (such as: / , . - _) and spaces.
Number standardization applies to:

• publication numbers
• citation numbers
• application numbers
• priority numbers

Example: a document coming from SIPO contains a priority number of the French authority, and the priority information in the original document reads: 10/03752 2010.09.21 FR . In the same family, a document exists by the USPTO, in which case the priority information reads: FR.............10 03752 . To create family relations between these documents, we standardize both instances of the same number, in this case to: FR10003752 (authority code, two-letter year code, six-digit serial number).

Raw Data

Standardized Number (including the authority code)



Stemming
For grammatical reasons, documents are going to use different forms of a word, such as organize, organizes, and organizing, or slow, slowly, and slowness. In TotalPatent One®, when you search for any form of a word and switch on stemming, your query will return results including other forms of the same term. The purpose of the stemming functionality is to reduce a word to its base form.

For example: be is the base form of am, are, and is, and car is the base form of cars, car's, cars'. An example sentence such as The boy's cars are different colors. will be reduced to The boy car be differ color. By default, TotalPatent One® supports stemming for English and German.

SPC
Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPC) are an intellectual property right serving as an extension to an existing patent right, granted by the European Union.

Title
The name of the invention.
The search alias for the title is TI:().

TotalPatent One®
TotalPatent One® is a patent search software created for patent researchers by LexisNexis®. With its fast and easy-to-use interface, TotalPatent One® provides users with comprehensive, up-to-date and relevant results from the largest online collection of enhanced first-level patent data.

Ultimate Owner
The ultimate owner is the legal person who ultimately benefits from owning the rights to a patent.
The search alias for ultimate owner is "UO:("")".

The UO information will help you to overcome the following search challenges:

Owner Search Challenges

• Finding the owner in case of ambiguous naming or misspellings.

• Finding the owner in case of translation issues: when patent offices adapt or translate original company names to their local languages, it can lead to mistakes. For example, some translations are simply the phonetical equivalents of the original company name in the local language.

• Finding the owner in case of mergers and acquisitions: a patent may now be owned by an entity due to a corporate merger or acquisition. Successful mergers and acquisitions are studied by our researchers to assign patents to their correct ultimate beneficiary.
• Finding the owner in corporate structures: a patent might be owned by a subsidiary, but the commercial power lies with the parent company.
• Finding the owner if similar names are used by multiple distinct companies. 

• Finding the owner in case of company name changes: the applicant’s name (registered by the patent office) may not exist anymore, so the patents registered under the original name must be assigned to the current owner.
• Finding the owner in case of patent transactions: individual patents tracked and assigned to the company that ultimately buys it.