Summary of Results of PATENTSCOPE® Search Service User Survey now available

October 26, 2006

Recently we conducted an online survey of users of the PATENTSCOPE® Search Service to get feedback on the service and to help us plan future improvements.

474 persons from 48 countries took the time to respond, which we think is a very good response rate.  Most of the respondents are patent attorneys and agents (55%) or patent information professionals (21%) but many are also inventors, researchers or from patent offices.

We are happy to note that many are already using the new RSS service to get weekly updates of search results.  9% of respondents are using RSS, which is a very high proportion compared to the use of RSS in general on the internet.

Feedback that we can use quickly included requests to add new features to the search engine.  In particular, people want to search by national phase entries, status and document kind codes.  There were also many comments on the usability of the search interface and suggestions to add more examples to make the search interface easier to use.

Many people commented that it is difficult to download or print full documents.  In fact, documents can be downloaded or printed with two mouse-clicks if you use the PDF format, but we note the point and will try to make downloading and printing more straightforward to use.

Expect to see some of these changes, as well as more data and document types, in the coming weeks and months.

Other requests that we will consider include analytical tools, language tools, better support for user accounts and email notifications.  These features involve more time and effort, but we note the demand.

Thanks to all of you who responded.  Suggestions and feedback are always welcome at pct.eproducts@wipo.int.