Welcome to your demonstration of Rapidpat Express! This free 30 minute session will introduce you to the power and convenience of adopting Rapidpat Express as your primary US patent research system. Please note that this demonstration does not include features that are available with a paid (Daily, Monthly, Annual) subscription to Rapidpat Express. This demonstration does include up-to-date patent data and is complete with full-text from 1976-present. You may subscribe to the full version of Rapidpat Express at the conclusion of your 30 minute session, or at any time.
Caution! This FREE Rapidpat Express demonstration version prevents you from accessing more than one 30 minute session/day. Multiple attempts at entry and/or opening multiple browsers will prematurely conclude your free demonstration session, and will also result in system interruptions.
To search, enter a query in the space provided, select a patent database to search, then click the Search button. Rapidpat Express will return a list of the documents that match your request. To view a document in the list, click on the link. After you have opened a document in Rapidpat Express, you can use the Next Hit and Prev Hit buttons on the button bar to navigate from hit to hit.
The search form includes checkboxes for search features.
Before submitting your query, you must select a patent database to search using your mouse. This demonstration requires that you earch each database individually and iteratively if you wish to extend the results of your query among multiple databases. With a paid subscription to Rapidpat Express, you may search multiple databases simultaneously. (You can subscribe at the conclusion of your free daily session, or at any time. Daily sessions are $25 (24 contiguous hours).
Rapidpat Express includes the full-text of granted patents 1976-present, and application documents from Mar-15-2001-present. Each database is updated weekly, with new documents available each Wednesday and Friday.
Ordering documents is as simple as clicking the "Order Patent" button on the upper left-hand side. When you do so, your patent document order queue will appear, from which you can add or delete documents. To return to your search results, simply click on the document link in the left-hand search results panel. Documents are provided in PDF (300 dpi), and are delivered via immediate download, or sent to your email address. Each document copy is just $1.99. (Paper and fax copies are also available for additional fees). Your patent document order queue will be saved during your session, and will automatically appear when your session is completed. Submit your order and select your deliver mode at this time. Document orders are processed immediately and are usually ready within minutes of submitting your order.
This demonstration version includes a hit limit of 500 documents. For best results, use targeted queries. To search with a document hit limit of 1,000, subscribe to Rapidpat Express Daily, Monthly or Annual.
Rapidpat Express supports two types of search requests. A natural language search is any sequence of text, like a sentence or a question. After a natural language search, Rapidpat Express sorts retrieved documents by their relevance to your search request.
A Boolean search request consists of a group of words or phrases linked by connectors such as and and or that indicate the relationship between them. Examples:
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Both words must be present |
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Either word can be present |
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Apple must occur within 5 words of pear |
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Apple must not occur within 5 words of pear |
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Only apple must be present |
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The field name must contain smith |
If you use more than one connector, you should use parentheses to indicate precisely what you want to search for. For example, apple and pear or orange juice could mean (apple and pear) or orange, or it could mean apple and (pear or orange).
Noise words, such as if and the, are ignored in searches.
Search terms may include the following special characters:
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Matches any single character. Example: appl? matches apply or apple. |
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* |
Matches any number of characters. Example: appl* matches application |
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~ |
Stemming. Example: apply~ matches apply, applies, applied. |
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% |
Fuzzy search. Example: ba%nana matches banana, bananna. |
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# |
Phonic search. Example: #smith matches smith, smythe. |
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Synonym search. Example: fast& matches quick. |
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Numeric range. Example: 12~~24 matches 18. |
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Variable term weighting. Example: apple:4 w/5 pear:1 |
You do not need to use any special punctuation or commands to search for a phrase. Simply enter the phrase the way it ordinarily appears. You can use a phrase anywhere in a search request. Example:
apple w/5 fruit salad
If a phrase contains a noise word, Rapidpat Express will skip over the noise word when searching for it. For example, a search for statue of liberty would retrieve any document containing the word statue, any intervening word, and the word liberty.
Punctuation inside of a search word is treated as a space. Thus, can't would be treated as a phrase consisting of two words: can and t. 1843(c)(8)(ii) would become 1843 c 8 ii (four words).
A search word can contain the wildcard characters * and ?. A ? in a word matches any single character, and a * matches any number of characters. The wildcard characters can be in any position in a word. For example:
appl* would match apple, application, etc.
*cipl* would match principle, participle, etc.
appl? would match apply and apple but not apples.
ap*ed would match applied, approved, etc.
Use of the * wildcard character near the beginning of a word will slow searches somewhat.
Stemming is applied to your search by default to extends a search to cover grammatical variations on a word. For example, a search for fish would also find fishing. A search for applied would also find applying, applies, and apply. There are two ways to add stemming to your searches:
A natural language search request is any combination of words, phrases, or sentences. After a natural language search, Rapidpat Express sorts retrieved documents by their relevance to your search request. Weighting of retrieved documents takes into account: the number of documents each word in your search request appears in (the more documents a word appears in, the less useful it is in distinguishing relevant from irrelevant documents); the number of times each word in the request appears in the documents; and the density of hits in each document. Noise words and search connectors like NOT and OR are ignored.
Fuzzy searching will find a word even if it is misspelled. For example, a fuzzy search for apple will find appple. Fuzzy searching can be useful when you are searching text that may contain typographical errors, or for text that has been scanned using optical character recognition (OCR). There are two ways to add fuzziness to searches:
When Rapidpat Express sorts search results after a search, by default all words in a request count equally in counting hits. However, you can change this by specifying the relative weights for each term in your search request, like this:
apple:5 and pear:1
This request would retrieve the same documents as apple and pear but, Rapidpat Express would weight apple five times as heavily as pear when sorting the results.
In a natural language search, Rapidpat Express automatically weights terms based on an analysis of their distribution in your documents. If you provide specific term weights in a natural language search, these weights will override the weights Rapidpat Express would otherwise assign.
Use the AND connector in a search request to connect two expressions, both of which must be found in any document retrieved. For example:
apple pie and poached pear would retrieve any document that contained both phrases.
(apple or banana) and (pear w/5 grape) would retrieve any document that (1) contained either apple OR banana, AND (2) contained pear within 5 words of grape.
Use the OR connector in a search request to connect two expressions, at least one of which must be found in any document retrieved. For example, apple pie or poached pear would retrieve any document that contained apple pie, poached pear, or both.
Use the W/N connector in a search request to specify that one word or phrase must occur within N words of the other. For example, apple w/5 pear would retrieve any document that contained apple within 5 words of pear. The following are examples of search requests using W/N:
(apple or pear) w/5 banana
(apple w/5 banana) w/10 pear
(apple and banana) w/10 pear
Some types of complex expressions using the W/N connector will produce ambiguous results and should not be used. The following are examples of ambiguous search requests:
(apple and banana) w/10 (pear and grape)
(apple w/10 banana) w/10 (pear and grape)
In general, at least one of the two expressions connected by W/N must be a single word or phrase or a group of words and phrases connected by OR. Example:
(apple and banana) w/10 (pear or grape)
(apple and banana) w/10 orange tree
Rapidpat Express uses two built in search words to mark the beginning and end of a file: xfirstword and xlastword. The terms are useful if you want to limit a search to the beginning or end of a file. For example, apple w/10 xlastword would search for apple within 10 words of the end of a document.
Use NOT in front of any search expression to reverse its meaning. This allows you to exclude documents from a search. Example:
apple sauce and not pear
NOT standing alone can be the start of a search request. For example, not pear would retrieve all documents that did not contain pear.
If NOT is not the first connector in a request, you need to use either AND or OR with NOT:
apple or not pear
not (apple w/5 pear)
The NOT W/ ("not within") operator allows you to search for a word or phrase not in association with another word or phrase. Example:
apple not w/20 pear
Unlike the W/ operator, NOT W/ is not symmetrical. That is, apple not w/20 pear is not the same as pear not w/20 apple. In the apple not w/20 pear request, Rapidpat Express searches for apple and excludes cases where apple is too close to pear. In the pear not w/20 apple request, Rapidpat Express searches for pear and excludes cases where pear is too close to apple.
A numeric range search is a search for any numbers that fall within a range. To add a numeric range component to a search request, enter the upper and lower bounds of the search separated by ~~ like this:
apple w/5 12~~17
This request would find any document containing apple within 5 words of a number between 12 and 17.
Numeric range searches only work with positive integers. A numeric range search includes the upper and lower bounds (so 12 and 17 would be retrieved in the above example).
For purposes of numeric range searching, decimal points and commas are treated as spaces and minus signs are ignored. For example, -123,456.78 would be interpreted as: 123 456 78 (three numbers). Using alphabet customization, the interpretation of punctuation characters can be changed. For example, if you change the comma and period from space to ignore, then 123,456.78 would be interpreted as 12345678.