The Japan Platform for Patent Information (JPlat-Pat), the online search engine for Japanese and related intellectual property applications, is now refined to be able to perform more detailed Japanese searches of prior art. This is anticipated to enable inventors, applicants, and agents to verify prior art more efficiently and effectively.
Now, it will be possible to combine searches of the the patent classification terms (FI/F-Terms, based on the International Patent Classification [IPC] system but further developed and updated by the Japan Patent Office) with term searches. Also, searching for two terms patent documents while defining the proximity of those respective terms to each other (e.g. two terms found with up to n unrelated characters between each other) will now be possible. Other updates include the inclusion of some 10 million non-digitized patent documents that date as far back as 1971, for text searches.
Please note that these features work specifically in Japanese. Please contact us if you need help with navigating a particular patent search in Japan.
(The information provided on this website is for informational purposes only and is not intended as legal advice. For questions or inquiries, please contact us for more information.)
Taro Yaguchi
Sources
Japan Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) release, published March 9, 2018.
PDF details from METI article.
