Wildcards and fields in PATENTSCOPE

March 31, 2022

The ever increasing coverage in terms of number of documents, the support of more and more different languages for search and the growing popularity of the PATENTSCOPE system have been impacting gradually the system's response times.

In order to maintain a high level of service with good consistent response times and ensure system stability, targeted limitations related to wildcards and to a few resource-hungry search fields were put in place:

1. Wildcards: the use of wildcard is now limited per query: 3 wildcards maximum per query for non-logged-in users and 7 wildcards maximum per query for logged-in users. It is recalled that a free of charge WIPO account can be created from the Login menu in the top black navigation bar;
2. Fields: the following fields are disabled and no longer supported:
   ALL, ALLTXT, TI, AB, DE, CL

For users who performed searches in those fields, the queries will have to be replaced by specifying the language such as EN_ALL, EN_ALLTXT, EN_AB, FR_ALL, ES_CL etc. yielding to far better response times and better precision.  If you need help, don’t hesitate to send your questions.

WIPO will also invest in last generation hardware to improve PATENTSCOPE's response times globally in the near future.