Patent Awareness Services

Patents make up one of the principal storehouses of information concerning the technical advances in the industrial world. Technical men have become increasingly aware of the importance of the patent literature. Evidence of this is seen in the fact that Chemical Abstracts makes a concerted effort to abstract all United States and foreign patents of possible interest to the chemist, and in the numerous patent-abstracting services that have sprung up in various parts of the world. 

Derwent Information Ltd. Derwent Information Ltd., previously known as Derwent PubHcations Ltd., changed its name in the 1990s to reflect more accurately the fact that its products go far beyond traditional pubHcations. Derwent provides a wide spectmm of information products and services, many of them relating to patents. Derwent also produces important databases (qv) of nonpatent information from the pharmaceutical and agncultural chemical Hterature. These products and services encompass alerting tools for current awareness, systems for retrospective search and retneval, and means for document deHvery and archiving. 

There are further resources available for English translations of Japanese patent documents. Paterra, Inc., (http // www.paterra.com) is pleased to present the InstantM D service for Japanese patents on the internet. The InstantM D service retrieves the requested patent by number and rapidly provides a translated version which is rendered for download in a two-column formatted Acrobat PDF file. The system covers all Japanese Kokai (A documents) published after January 1, 1993 and aU granted Japanese patents (Toroku) published since May 27, 1996. New documents are entered into the system within 2 weeks of being published in Japan, hi a related development, Protys (http //www.protys.info/) provides a full text Enghsh database of the latest Japanese patents in a specialty current awareness database. 

CHEMICAL ABSTRACTS SERVICE Division of the Ameriean Chemieal Society, 2540 Olentangy River Road, Columbus OH 43210, (614) 447-3731. Established 1907. Over 13 million abstracts of chemical related literature and patents, and over 16 million material records. Publishes numerous abstracts, current awareness bulletins, and registry handbooks. Most literature now also available on CD-ROMs and online through STN International, which has 200 databases available. Connected to international databases. 

Chemical Reactions Documentation Service designed for both current awareness and retrospective retrieval. Its monthly publication, the Journal of Synthetic Methods, covers the journal and patent literature, and provides 3,000 abstracts of recently published papers annually, together with 3,000 supplementary references. 

The Patent Index refers from the questioned US patent 5,158,840 to a European patent (Fig. 47). The A after the American patent number indicates that the patent has been granted, the A1 after the EP number shows that at this time Chemical Abstracts Service has become aware of this patent as a patent application. The patent family is shown under the number of the European patent (Fig. 48) Firstly the codes for those countries are named for which the protection by the European patent is registered - in this case there are four countries Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Sweden. This is followed by the respective CA abstract number. It also states that a Japanese patent belonging to this family has been submitted. In the listing of a patent family it is not possible to identify which is the parent patent holding the priority. 

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