Searchers

We employ in-house Patent and Trade Mark searchers who use a combination of subscription sites and free, internet sites in connection with Patent searching. Our searchers, in fact, have access to about 30 subscription Patent databases including:

1. WPIL (Derwent World Patent Index).
2. Inpadoc (International Patent Documentation Centre Database).
3. Pluspat (details of Patents/applications of more than 70 Patent issuing authorities).
4. Europat (European Patent database).

The free patent Databases accessed are:

1. Espacenet and Epoline (European Patent Office databases)
2. United States Patent & Trademark Office ("USPTO") website
3. Japanese Patent Office Industrial Property digital library

Patent status information is also obtained by our in-house searchers from the databases of various National Patent Offices (e.g. in the UK, Switzerland, Australia and the Netherlands).

Additionally our searchers utilise software that enables Patent documents to be downloaded from internet sources (30 million documents are available in this way). These documents can be saved conveniently as .pdf files that can then supplied to clients where required.

The searchers have unlimited, direct access to databases covering UK, CTM, US (Federal) and Irish Trade Marks and we can therefore perform, in-house, full clearance searches for Trade Marks to be protected in these territories.

Our searchers can also access most European Trade Mark databases on a pay-per-view basis. The same applies to Japan. Some Patent Offices such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan also provide free access to their databases over the internet but the information available can be limited.