Assignees

Search format

Questel has undertaken a normalization process for Assignee Names :

•      Abbreviations such as CORP, SA, KK, GMBH, etc. have been suppressed

•      Spelling errors are detected and corrected

•      The most recent version of a name may be searched. The name of the applicant as provided by the office is always available and viewable.

A new field has been created for searching the standardized assignee names:  NPA. The NPA field contains normalized names.

Assignees names as provided by all patents offices are always available, searchable and displayable.

•      The Normalization Process is and will continue to be ongoing, so search on the name of the patent assignee or owner at the time of publication of a patent:

•      Use the unique part of the name; do not include words such as Corp, Inc, Ltd, KK or GmbH.

•      Use truncation: + on the stem of each word in the assignee name to allow for multiple word endings

•      Use all possible variations of the name: acronyms, spelled out in full, and as one word or two
Use all earlier versions of a company name

Spaces, if used, are the equivalent to D operator.

Different versions of an assignee name can be covered in one search by entering the variations separated by a comma(s).  The comma is equivalent to the OR operator.

Original assignee and current assignee

Three options are available:

•      Assignee (original or current): FamPat and Fullpat collections

•      Current assignee: FamPat and Fullpat collections

•      Original assignee: FamPat, Fullpat and Fulltext collections

Assignee (original or current)

Original and current assignees can be searched for in the following fields:

•      PA field (Applicant/Assignee): most recent name provided by standardization, or otherwise the name provided by the offices or by reassignments

•      OPA field (Original assignee name): name of the applicant in a non-Latin language. The field is available for CN, JP, KR, TW, RU and WO publications in Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. This field should be queried using non-Latin characters 

•      PAH field (Patent Assignee History): history of applicant's names for all of the offices' publication steps

•      OWR field (Owner): Mainly available for US, EP, DE, and BE patents. It is present when the assignee is changed

•      REAS field (Reassignment Details): history of applicants' names only for US reassignments (legal events originating from the USPTO)

Current assignee (by default)

Only the PA field is searched: most recent name provided by standardization, or otherwise the name provided by the offices or by reassignments.  

Original assignee

Only the PA field is searched: most recent name provided by standardization, or otherwise the name provided by the offices or by reassignments.  

Assignee Wizard

You can check how an assignee name is indexed in the collection. This option is only available when Assignee (current or original) is selected for FamPat and Fullpat collections and when Original assignee is selected for Fulltext collection. Enter the name of the assignee or the beginning of the name, and then click the lookup tool index available to the right of the box .

In a new window a list of 50 names of assignee will display, starting with the term you entered.

The Frequency column provides the number of records available in the database for each of the 50 names. 

You can browse the index by using the navigation arrows at the bottom left and select one or more names by checking the boxes. Then click the Add button to add your original search or the Replace button to replace the previous input. The Cancel button closes the wizard and leaves your initial request unchanged.

Print Preview displays, in a new window, the reformatted list allowing you to edit or print the list. The Search button launches a new wizard search no matter what is in the input line.

The OWR field of the legal status will not be included in a search for the terms selected in the wizard.

See also truncation and operators.

Corporate Tree 

The Corporate Tree button lets you search both parents and subsidiaries of the company whose patents you are searching for.

Once the entities have been selected, you can add them to your initial search or replace it. The Replace button is only available if you are searching the current assignee (Default selection). Applicants names selected in the affiliations tree are searched on the NPAN field, while the initially registered name of the applicant is searched on the classical fields (PA, OPA etc...) if you use the Replace button.

Quotation marks are automatically integrated into the names of the sought-after applicant, except for the initial name in case you use the Add button.

The operator M is used for separating the different parts of the applicant’s name.

The operator OR is used for separating the different names selected.

In front of the parent companies, the icon  is displayed. Clicking on that icon brings you to a new corporate tree. The company's name is placed on a yellow background surround by parent and child entities.

When the same parent entity name appears twice in the corporate tree, the icon will only be shown by the name on the top level.

The Collapse all button is used to collapse the tree.

The Select all button is used to select all subsidiaries. Because the number of characters is limited for each query, if all of the subsidiaries exceed the number of characters, then several queries will result from the selection and a combination in the history will include all of those questions.

The assignee names searched are highlighted and you can Select only highlighted or Select only non-highlighted.    

Once the entities have been selected, you can add them to your initial search or replace it. Operators are automatically added.

The Clear function is used to deselect the entities.

The Cancel button closes the corporate tree window.