Table of Contents

Searching IFI Patent Status

As you can see from the list of values for IFI Patent Status, many of the possible status values contain similar wording, so it is important to be precise when searching ifi_patstat.

Searching for the terms "active" or "expired" will return inclusive results. For example, searching for "active" will return all records containing the statuses "Active" or "Active - Reinstated", while searching for "expired" will return all records containing a status of "Expired", "Expired - Lifetime", or "Expired- Fee Related".

However, if you want to limit your search to records with the status "Expired - Lifetime" only, then you must enclose it in quotes: test

ifi_patstat:"expired – lifetime"

...

ifi_patstat:(not-in-force OR expired OR withdrawn OR ceased OR revoked OR abandoned)

Searching the Anticipated and Adjusted Expiration Date Fields

The anticipated and adjusted expiration date fields can be useful in searching. However, one must be careful.

For example, if you want to see how many US grants expire in 2020, it is important to note that the ifi_expdyear_adj field is only present in a record if there has been a term adjustment or extension. When there is no adjustment or extension, there is no adjusted expiration date. Therefore, you must use the anticipated expiration date.

So if you enter the following search using the anticipated expiration year:

pnctry:US AND pnkind:(A OR B1 OR B2) AND ifi_expdyear:2020

this results in 208,915 records. This is NOT the correct result as it excludes grants with term adjustments and extensions that when adjusted, expire in 2020.

If you perform the same search and replace the anticipated expiration year with the adjusted expiration year:

pnctry:US AND pnkind:(A OR B1 OR B2) AND ifi_expdyear_adj:2020

this results in 32,889 records. This is obviously NOT correct and reflects only those records with populated ifi_expdyear_adj fields (about 15% of the records).

To get the correct number, you must combine the anticipated and adjusted expiration date fields using the "OR" operator in a nested search:

pnctry:US AND pnkind:(A OR B1 OR B2) AND ((ifi_expdyear_adj:2020) OR (ifi_expdyear:2020 NOT flags:has_ifi_expdyear_adj))

This results in 167,209 records. It is the sum of:

pnctry:US AND pnkind:(A OR B1 OR B2) AND (ifi_expdyear:2020 NOT flags:has_ifi_expdyear_adj)

which results in 134,320 records, and

pnctry:US AND pnkind:(A OR B1 OR B2) AND (ifi_expdyear_adj:2020)

which results in 32,889 records.

Searching IFI Parties

If you know the standardized name of the party you're searching for, then using the facet fields f_ifi_name_original and f_ifi_name_current may return more accurate results than ifi_pa, ifi_name_original and ifi_name_current. That is because the facet fields are not tokenized (i.e. broken down into components during the search process). Rather, they will only return records which are an exact match. For example:

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