Patent Lens
Encyclopedia
The Patent Lens is an online patent search facility and knowledge resource, provided by CAMBIA
, an independent, international non-profit organization
dedicated to democratizing innovation. Launched in 2000, the Patent Lens allows free searching of over 10 million full-text patent documents, including United States patents and applications
, Australian patents and applications
, European patents and Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications. The Patent Lens is distinguished as being the only not-for-profit facility of its kind, with international coverage and links to non-patent literature and tutorials.
Searches of the Patent Lens can be undertaken using numerous variables, including full-text, title, abstract, inventor, applicant/assignee, publication number and filing number. A user is also able to search for lapsed, abandoned, or expired US patents via the INPADOC
patent status and family information service. Patent families may be visualized using graphical trees as pdfs.
The Patent Lens currently links to regulatory data in the form of the United States Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) Orange Book: Approved Drug Products with Therapeutic Equivalence Evaluations. Biological sequence data is integrated via links to National Center for Biotechnology Information
(NCBI) GenBank
and the Patent Lens' own gene sequences. The Patent Lens Sequence Project, commenced in June 2006, provides the only public facility to enable users to explore over 80 million DNA
and protein sequences disclosed in patents.
Patent tutorials are available on the site covering patent claims, freedom to operate, patent inventorship
, and continuing patent application
s. Plant breeders' rights
(PBR), also known as plant variety rights (PVR), are also addressed. This has the intention to 'forge a learning resource that participants in innovation systems at all levels... can use to learn of critical and timely issues relevant to improving the public good... by engaging with the patent system.'
, English
and French
, with the full text of European Patent Office
(EPO) patents being searchable in English, French and German
. PCT applications are searchable in Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese
, Korean
, Russian
and Spanish
.
In the field of health and medicine, landscapes have been created for human genome
patenting, the influenza
genome, the human Telomerase
gene, molecular markers outside gene sequences, and adjuvants. For agriculture and the environment, landscapes exist to describe the Agrobacterium
-mediated transformation of plants, promoters used to regulate gene expression, antibiotic resistance genes and their uses in plant genetic transformation, resistance to Phosphinothricin, positive selection, bioindicators/ambiosensors, and the rice genome.
From 2000-2004, the Rockefeller Foundation
backed development of the initial technology landscapes. In 2005, the Patent Lens made the landscapes fully navigable, interactive and updatable by users.
, Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization
(WIPO) in March, 2009, in 'view of the shared objective of making patent information systems more comprehensive and accessible, and turning raw patent data into useful information resources so as to strengthen the empirical basis of international policy processes.'
Nature Biotechnology has called the Patent Lens 'a giant leap in the right direction' for providing researchers, technology transfer offices
and company executives a facile means of establishing the novelty of their offerings and the nature of their competitors' inventions.
CAMBIA
Cambia is an independent, international non-profit organization dedicated to democratizing innovation and promoting change for the public good. Through the development and dissemination of new technologies, tools, and collaborative instruments, including the Patent Lens and Biological Open Source ...
, an independent, international non-profit organization
Non-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...
dedicated to democratizing innovation. Launched in 2000, the Patent Lens allows free searching of over 10 million full-text patent documents, including United States patents and applications
United States Patent and Trademark Office
The United States Patent and Trademark Office is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that issues patents to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property identification.The USPTO is based in Alexandria, Virginia,...
, Australian patents and applications
IP Australia
The Australian Patent Office is a division of IP Australia which is an agency of the Australian Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research. APO issues patents for inventions. APO was established in 1904 by the Commonwealth of Australia and since 1998 has been located in one building,...
, European patents and Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications. The Patent Lens is distinguished as being the only not-for-profit facility of its kind, with international coverage and links to non-patent literature and tutorials.
Searches of the Patent Lens can be undertaken using numerous variables, including full-text, title, abstract, inventor, applicant/assignee, publication number and filing number. A user is also able to search for lapsed, abandoned, or expired US patents via the INPADOC
INPADOC
INPADOC, which stands for International Patent Documentation Center, is an international patent collection. The database is produced and maintained by the European Patent Office...
patent status and family information service. Patent families may be visualized using graphical trees as pdfs.
The Patent Lens currently links to regulatory data in the form of the United States Food and Drug Administration
Food and Drug Administration
The Food and Drug Administration is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, one of the United States federal executive departments...
(FDA) Orange Book: Approved Drug Products with Therapeutic Equivalence Evaluations. Biological sequence data is integrated via links to National Center for Biotechnology Information
National Center for Biotechnology Information
The National Center for Biotechnology Information is part of the United States National Library of Medicine , a branch of the National Institutes of Health. The NCBI is located in Bethesda, Maryland and was founded in 1988 through legislation sponsored by Senator Claude Pepper...
(NCBI) GenBank
GenBank
The GenBank sequence database is an open access, annotated collection of all publicly available nucleotide sequences and their protein translations. This database is produced and maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information as part of the International Nucleotide Sequence...
and the Patent Lens' own gene sequences. The Patent Lens Sequence Project, commenced in June 2006, provides the only public facility to enable users to explore over 80 million DNA
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...
and protein sequences disclosed in patents.
Patent tutorials are available on the site covering patent claims, freedom to operate, patent inventorship
Inventor (patent)
In patent law, an inventor is the person, or persons in United States patent law, who contribute to the claims of a patentable invention. In some patent law frameworks, however, such as in the European Patent Convention and its case law, no explicit, accurate definition of who exactly is an...
, and continuing patent application
Continuing patent application
Under United States patent law, a continuing patent application is a patent application which follows, and claims priority to, an earlier filed patent application....
s. Plant breeders' rights
Plant breeders' rights
Plant breeders' rights , also known as plant variety rights , are rights granted to the breeder of a new variety of plant that give him exclusive control over the propagating material and harvested material of a new variety for a number of years.With these rights, the breeder can choose...
(PBR), also known as plant variety rights (PVR), are also addressed. This has the intention to 'forge a learning resource that participants in innovation systems at all levels... can use to learn of critical and timely issues relevant to improving the public good... by engaging with the patent system.'
Native Language Support
The patent search interface is available in ChineseChinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
, English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, with the full text of European Patent Office
European Patent Office
The European Patent Office is one of the two organs of the European Patent Organisation , the other being the Administrative Council. The EPO acts as executive body for the Organisation while the Administrative Council acts as its supervisory body as well as, to a limited extent, its legislative...
(EPO) patents being searchable in English, French and German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
. PCT applications are searchable in Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
and Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
.
Technology Landscapes
In addition to the patent search engine, the Patent Lens also hosts a number of “technology landscapes”. These landscapes serve as interpretation maps that analyze volumes of specialized patent, scientific, technical and business data around particular topics into a more navigable form.In the field of health and medicine, landscapes have been created for human genome
Human genome
The human genome is the genome of Homo sapiens, which is stored on 23 chromosome pairs plus the small mitochondrial DNA. 22 of the 23 chromosomes are autosomal chromosome pairs, while the remaining pair is sex-determining...
patenting, the influenza
Influenza
Influenza, commonly referred to as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae , that affects birds and mammals...
genome, the human Telomerase
Telomerase
Telomerase is an enzyme that adds DNA sequence repeats to the 3' end of DNA strands in the telomere regions, which are found at the ends of eukaryotic chromosomes. This region of repeated nucleotide called telomeres contains non-coding DNA material and prevents constant loss of important DNA from...
gene, molecular markers outside gene sequences, and adjuvants. For agriculture and the environment, landscapes exist to describe the Agrobacterium
Agrobacterium
Agrobacterium is a genus of Gram-negative bacteria established by H. J. Conn that uses horizontal gene transfer to cause tumors in plants. Agrobacterium tumefaciens is the most commonly studied species in this genus...
-mediated transformation of plants, promoters used to regulate gene expression, antibiotic resistance genes and their uses in plant genetic transformation, resistance to Phosphinothricin, positive selection, bioindicators/ambiosensors, and the rice genome.
From 2000-2004, the Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
backed development of the initial technology landscapes. In 2005, the Patent Lens made the landscapes fully navigable, interactive and updatable by users.
Endorsement
The landscaping activities of the Patent Lens have been endorsed by Dr. Francis GurryFrancis Gurry
Francis Gurry is an Australian national and the fourth and current Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization . He is also Secretary-General of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants...
, Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization
World Intellectual Property Organization
The World Intellectual Property Organization is one of the 17 specialized agencies of the United Nations. WIPO was created in 1967 "to encourage creative activity, to promote the protection of intellectual property throughout the world"....
(WIPO) in March, 2009, in 'view of the shared objective of making patent information systems more comprehensive and accessible, and turning raw patent data into useful information resources so as to strengthen the empirical basis of international policy processes.'
Nature Biotechnology has called the Patent Lens 'a giant leap in the right direction' for providing researchers, technology transfer offices
Technology transfer
Technology Transfer, also called Transfer of Technology and Technology Commercialisation, is the process of skill transferring, knowledge, technologies, methods of manufacturing, samples of manufacturing and facilities among governments or universities and other institutions to ensure that...
and company executives a facile means of establishing the novelty of their offerings and the nature of their competitors' inventions.
See also
- Biological Innovation for Open SocietyBiological Innovation for Open SocietyBiOS is an international initiative to foster innovation and freedom to operate in the biological sciences. BiOS was officially launched on 10 February 2005 by Cambia, an independent, international non-profit organization dedicated to democratizing innovation...
- CAMBIACAMBIACambia is an independent, international non-profit organization dedicated to democratizing innovation and promoting change for the public good. Through the development and dissemination of new technologies, tools, and collaborative instruments, including the Patent Lens and Biological Open Source ...
- Richard Anthony JeffersonRichard Anthony JeffersonRichard Anthony Jefferson is an American-born molecular biologist, who developed the reporter gene system GUS, a widespread molecular technique...