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Applications for LexisNexis Patent Materials
(November 19, 2004)

The patent and related materials on the LexisNexis® services comprise one of the most comprehensive collections available. From patents to case law, legislation to secondary sources -- you'll find it all.  Below is a review of some of the ways you can use this information to make your patent searches more effective and efficient.

Prior Art Searching
The LexisNexis services currently offers searchable patent information from three key patent offices:

• United States - granted patents and drawing sheets
• European - applications, granted patents and exemplary drawings
• Japanese - English language abstracts and exemplary drawing sheets

To assist with your prior art searching, the LexisNexis service extracts and displays the Core Terms -- the key words and terms describing technology -- in its U.S. patents in the FULL and CITE formats.

Patent Family Searching
When you need to take a global look at a particular technology or company's patents, use INPADOC -- a database of bibliographic and legal status information produced by the European Patent Organization.

Bibliographic (title, inventor, assignee) and family (priority application numbers, countries and dates, and equivalents) information is available for patents issued from 66 countries and organizations. You can access this information by running broad searches or by using the Get a Document feature to pull up the family information for a particular patent number.

Validity Searching
The patents on the LexisNexis services are updated weekly with post issuance data to provide you with the most current information on the status of your patent. The U.S. patent updates include notices of litigation, reexamination proceedings, interference decisions and expired patents. The European Patent materials are updated with bibliographic, legal status, and administrative information from the European Patent Bulletin. This information is embedded directly within the text of the affected patent. Legal status information for 22 countries can also be obtained using the INPADOC file.

There are a variety of other sources you can use to find the current status of the patent you are interested in. Using the Shepard's® Citations Service, you can find case, law review and Official Gazette cites to your patents. A search for your patent number in the case law files might uncover some newer, unpublished decisions. Other references to patent litigation can be found in news stories, SEC filings, and company information throughout the LexisNexis services.  

Further Patent Search Applications
The information contained in the full-text patents can be helpful in a variety of contexts, including:

• Finding expert witnesses
• Monitoring company and industry information
• Monitoring technology
• Monitoring post issuance events.

Patent Law Research Task Page
Now you can find all of the patent resources you need, arranged in one, easy-to-use page allowing you to link back and forth between search results and sources.

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