Patent Publication Number: US-2015074005-A1

Title: Method and apparatus for facilitating patent searching

Description:
RELATED APPLICATION 
     This application hereby claims priority under 35 U.S.C. §119 to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/874,707, filed on 12 Dec. 2006, entitled “Method and Apparatus for Facilitating Patent Searching,” by inventors William C. Brougher and Doug Banks. 
    
    
     BACKGROUND 
     1. Field of the Invention 
     The present invention generally relates to the field of information retrieval. More specifically, the present invention relates to a system that facilitates efficiently searching through patent-related documents. 
     2. Related Art 
     The relentless growth of the Internet has been largely fueled by the development of sophisticated search engines, which enable users to easily comb through billions of web pages looking for specific pages of interest. Although such search engines are well-suited for searching through web pages, they are not well-suited for searching through certain types of documents, such as patents, which have a specific format and which are searched in very specific ways. 
     There exist a number of web sites that enable users to browse through patent-related documents, but none of these web sites provide this capability through user interface which is both intuitive and easy-to-use. 
     Hence, what is needed is a method and an apparatus that facilitates searching for patent-related documents without the shortcomings of existing systems. 
     SUMMARY 
     One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that displays a patent. This system provides a user interface, which is configured to display panels containing different sections of the patent, wherein the panels for the different sections of the patent are visible at the same time. In this way, a user does not have to navigate to view the different sections of the patent. 
     In a variation on this embodiment, if less than a specified amount of data would appear in the panels, the display is configured to present a scanned version of the front page of the patent instead of the panels. 
     In a variation on this embodiment, a panel is a contiguous two-dimensional region in the display which can have any shape. 
     In a variation on this embodiment, the panels for the different sections of the patent can include: (1) a patent summary panel, which displays the abstract of the patent and also displays information associated with the patent, including: the patent number, the filing date, the issue date, the names of the inventors and the assignee; (2) a citations panel which displays documents which are cited by the patent; and (3) a claims panel which displays one or more claims in the patent. Note that one or more of the panels can be dynamically configured to facilitate presentation. For example, a panel for a particular section of a patent can be sized to display all of the content in the section. On the other hand, if there is no content in the section, then the panel can be eliminated from the display. 
     In a further variation, the citations panel displays the cited documents in ranked order, wherein each cited document is ranked based on a number of references to the cited document. 
     In a variation on this embodiment, the display also includes links to corresponding sections in a scanned version of the patent, wherein the sections include: the abstract, the description, and the claims of the patent. 
     In a variation on this embodiment, the display includes a search box for the patent, which allows a user to enter a query to search for specific terms in the patent. 
     In a variation on this embodiment, the display includes a link to a related document at a patent office web site. In a further variation, the link to the related document can be: a link to a corresponding version of the patent at the patent office website; or a link to an entry for the patent on the public PAIR system at the patent office website. 
     In a variation on this embodiment, the layout includes a drawings section which displays thumbnail versions of the drawings in the patent. When a user selects on a thumbnail version of a drawing, the user interface displays an expanded version of the drawing. 
     In a variation on this embodiment, the layout includes a “referenced-by section,” which displays other patents and other related documents which reference the patent. 
     One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates searching through patent-related documents. This system includes a patent database which contains patent related documents. It also includes a user interface, which provides a search box through which the user can enter a query containing search terms. The system additionally includes a searching mechanism, which is configured to process the query by searching in the patent database for matching patents which contain the search terms, and to display any matching patents. If the searching mechanism cannot find a patent containing a search term, and if the search term is similar to a term which appears in one or more patents, the searching mechanism is configured to suggest that the similar search term be used in place of the search term in a subsequent query. 
     In a variation on this embodiment, if a user selects a matching patent, the user interface is configured to highlight the search terms while displaying the matching patent. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES 
         FIG. 1  illustrates a patent searching system in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIG. 2  presents a flow chart illustrating the patent searching process in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIG. 3  presents a flow chart illustrating the process of displaying a patent in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIG. 4  illustrates an about-this-patent page in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIG. 5  illustrates a front page of a patent in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
     The following description is presented to enable any person skilled in the art to make and use the invention, and is provided in the context of a particular application and its requirements. Various modifications to the disclosed embodiments will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art, and the general principles defined herein may be applied to other embodiments and applications without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention. Thus, the present invention is not limited to the embodiments shown, but is to be accorded the widest scope consistent with the claims. 
     The data structures and code described in this detailed description are typically stored on a computer-readable storage medium, which may be any device or medium that can store code and/or data for use by a computer system. This includes, but is not limited to, volatile memory, non-volatile memory, magnetic and optical storage devices such as disk drives, magnetic tape, CDs (compact discs), DVDs (digital versatile discs or digital video discs), or other media capable of storing computer readable media now known or later developed. 
     Patent Searching System 
       FIG. 1  illustrates a patent searching system in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. The patents which are searched originate at a patent office  102 , such as the United States Patent &amp; Trademark Office or another national patent office, such as the European patent office. Alternatively, the patents can be obtained from a patent service such as Micropatent M. More specifically, patent documents  104 , such as issued patents and published applications, are transferred from patent office  102  to a processing module  105 , which performs a number of operations on the patent documents, such as optical character recognition (OCR) operations and compression, indexing and ranking operations. Note that the patent documents can include bitmap images of the patent documents, as well as other types of patent metadata provided by patent office  102 , such as serial numbers and filing dates. The processed documents are then stored in data center  108 . 
     During a subsequent searching process, a patent search engine  112  receives a query  113  from a user  111  through a web browser  114 . This query  113  specifies a number of terms to be searched for in the patent documents. In response to query  113 , search engine  112  uses search terms specified in the query to identify patents that satisfy the query. Search engine  112  then returns a response  115  through web browser  114 , which includes a list of matching patents, along with references to the identified patents and possibly includes ranking information. 
     Patent Searching Process 
       FIG. 2  presents a flow chart illustrating the patent searching process in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. During this process, the patent search engine receives a query containing search terms from a user (step  202 ). Next, the patent search engine searches the patent database to identify patents which contain the search terms (step  204 ). If such matching patents are identified, the system displays a list of the matching patents (step  206 ). Finally, if a user selects a matching patent, for example by clicking on a link to the matching patent, the system displays the patent (step  208 ). This process is described in more detail below with reference to  FIG. 3 . 
     In one embodiment of the present invention, if the search engine cannot find a patent containing a search term, and if the search term is similar to a term which appears in one or more patents, the search engine is configured to suggest that the similar search term be used in place of the original search term in a subsequent query. Alternatively, if the search engine cannot find a patent, the system can enable the user to search the patent office web site to find the patent because the patent office web site may contain some recently issued patents that have not yet been loaded onto the patent database. 
     In one embodiment of the present invention, if a user selects a matching patent, the user interface is configured to highlight the search terms while displaying the matching patent. 
     Displaying a Patent 
       FIG. 3  presents a flow chart illustrating the process of displaying a patent in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. The process starts by examining how much data there is to display for the patent. If a pre-specified amount of data exists to display for the patent, the system is configured to display an “about-this-patent page,” which contains panels for different sections of the patent (step  302 ). These panels for the different sections are visible at the same time, so that a user does not have to navigate to view the different sections of the patent. Otherwise, if less than the pre-specified amount of data exists, the system presents a scanned version of the front page of the patent (such as appears in  FIG. 5 ) instead of the panels. 
     An exemplary layout for an about-this-patent page appears in  FIG. 4 . Note that this layout includes a patent-summary panel, which displays the abstract of the patent and also displays information associated with the patent, including: the patent number, the filing date, the issue date, the names of the inventors and the assignee, the Primary Patent Examiner and various classification information. Also note that we can use a double-column layout as shown in  FIG. 4  or alternatively a single-column layout. Or, in general a layout with any number of columns. 
     The layout also includes a citations panel which displays documents which are cited by the patent. Note that the citations panel can display the cited documents in ranked order, wherein each cited documents can be ranked, for example, based upon a number of references to the cited document. 
     On the right-hand side of  FIG. 4 , the layout includes a claims panel which displays one or more claims in the patent. 
     Also note that the layout can include a referenced-by section (not shown), which displays other patents and other related documents which reference the patent. 
     The display in  FIG. 4  also provides a search box for the patent, which allows a user to enter a query to search for specific terms in the patent (step  304 ). 
     The display in  FIG. 4  also provides links to corresponding sections in a scanned version of the patent, wherein the sections can include: the abstract, the description, and the claims of the patent (step  306 ). These links enable the user to directly navigate to these sections of the scanned version of the patent. 
     In one embodiment of the present invention, the display also provides thumbnail versions of the drawings in the patent (not shown in  FIG. 4 ). If a user selects on a thumbnail version of a drawing, the user interface displays an expanded version of the drawing (step  308 ). 
     In one embodiment of the present invention, the display also includes a link to a related document at the patent office web site. (See the link labeled “View Patent at USPTO” on the left-hand side of patent summary section.) This link can navigate to a corresponding version of the patent at the patent office website. Alternatively, the link can navigate to an entry for the patent on the public PAIR system at the patent office website, which enables the user to obtain the file history for the patent. 
     In one embodiment of the present invention, the system uses OCR techniques to extract textual data from the drawings, which is stored along with the patent. This enables the search engine to search through textual information contained within the drawings. 
     The foregoing descriptions of embodiments of the present invention have been presented only for purposes of illustration and description. They are not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the present invention to the forms disclosed. Accordingly, many modifications and variations will be apparent to practitioners skilled in the art. Additionally, the above disclosure is not intended to limit the present invention. The scope of the present invention is defined by the appended claims.