Director's Blog: the latest from USPTO leadership

Patent Public Search tool – a streamlined way to search all U.S. published patent applications

Blog by Andrew Faile, Acting Commissioner for Patents, and Jamie Holcombe, Chief Information Officer

“The work you have done on the new public search system is top notch… it saves a lot of time while improving the search results I am able to obtain… Very impressive work.”

“Looking forward to using this new tool for my upcoming patent applications.”

As part of our ongoing effort to modernize and streamline our systems, earlier this year, we unveiled an all new Patent Public Search (PPUBS) tool. PPUBS is a free online search tool for all U.S. published patent applications and patent grants. Currently, approximately 4,500 users are conducting patent searches with PPUBS each day in the U.S. and internationally, and close to 350,000 people have used PPUBS since it launched. Based on the success and positive feedback we’ve received on PPUBS – with a few testimonial examples listed above – it will officially replace our legacy systems this September.

With the launch of PPUBS, you can now search the text of all published U.S. patents and U.S. Pre-Grant publications (PGPubs) remotely in one streamlined system. Previously, in order to conduct a similar search, you needed to visit a USPTO facility like our headquarters in Alexandria, a regional office, or a Patent and Trademark Resource Center. That also meant using one of four legacy systems: Public-Examiner’s Automated Search Tool (PubEAST), Public-Web-based Examiner’s Search Tool (PubWEST), Patent Full-Text and Image Database (PatFT), and Patent Application Full-Text and Image Database (AppFT).

We developed PPUBS based on the current internal tool used by patent examiners, Patents End to End Search (PE2E-Search). Some similar features include highlighting, efficient tagging, and advanced notes for searching, analyzing, and managing patent data.

Some additional benefits of PPUBS include:

• Layouts: Multiple layouts and tools allow you to view more data at once and perform more precise searching.
• Highlighting: Multi-color highlighting allows you to easily sort and categorize your search results.
• Tagging: Document tagging allows you to group, rename, or color code your search results, helping you better organize your data.
• Notes: More advanced notes allow you to include tags, relevant claims, or other useful details.
• Quality: Robust full-text searching of U.S. patents and published applications improves the quality of your search and provides enhanced access to prior art.
• Familiar usability: If you previously used PubEAST and PubWEST, you will find that PPUBS has similar familiar searching options.

We are holding a number of regular training sessions on PPUBS – including webinars for novice searchers and advanced searchers. To view upcoming public training sessions, visit the events page of the USPTO website. We also offer training materials, quick reference guides, frequently asked questions, and a help center on the Patent Public Search webpage.

Your feedback is important to help us identify any issues with PPUBS and to determine features we may want to add or improve. If you have questions about Patent Public Search, please contact us. We are confident the new, powerful, and flexible capabilities of PPUBS will improve the overall patent searching process. If you aren’t already using it, we hope you’ll try it soon! 

Posted at 08:22AM Aug 10, 2022 in patents  |  Comments[12]