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CAS Expands Asian Patent Coverage

CAS Expands Asian Patent Coverage, Improves Timeliness and Extends Reach Back to 19th Century for U.S. Patents

Columbus, OH, November 28, 2006 - Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), a division of the American Chemical Society, announced significant patent information improvements in CAS databases available through STN, SciFinder and SciFinder Scholar^TM. CAS made the announcement during the Online Information 2006 conference held this week in London.

The announcement showcased recent enhancements in the timely availability of Chinese patent records, expanded coverage of Korean patent information, and improved functionality of the F Term Thesaurus for Japanese patents. CAS officials also announced the addition of thousands of U.S. patent records from the 19th and early 20th centuries to the CA^SM/CAplus^SM databases.

"Scientific information in patents has become increasingly important for many areas of research in chemistry and the life sciences," explained Dr. Catharina Maulbecker, CAS Vice President, Marketing & Sales. "Taken together, our latest improvements in timeliness and scope of coverage make CAS an even stronger resource for both Asian and U.S. patents."

The announced improvements include:

• Faster access to Chinese patent records - By using CA/CAplus, researchers can access complete, up-to-date information 120 days faster than any comparable database. CAS sets this new timeliness standard through new processing software tools and procedures developed in-house at CAS.
• Expanded Korean patent data - With the addition of 2006 patent information, searchers can access the latest Korean patent information available, in addition to records for granted patents since 1997 and examined applications since 2000.
• Improved F Term Thesaurus - With these upgrades, searchers can efficiently access Japanese patent classification codes and content, and determine the content of Japanese patents with vague or ambiguous titles. The end result makes it easier to find and identify F-Terms for search strategies.
• More U.S. patent information - CAS added 10,000 records for U.S. chemical patents from 1900-1906 and nearly 8,700 for U.S. patent records from 1890-1899. CAS also added information from older journal literature to enhance the exploration of prior art pertaining to patents. The databases now contain about 2,600 records from the 1878-1906 issues of the Journal of the Chemical Society, Transactions. By Jan. 1, 2007, data from the 1890-1906 issues of the Journal of the Chemical Society, Abstracts will be loade d as well. These additions offer searchers access to a wealth of scientific information of potential relevance to the research and patenting efforts of today.

CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society, provides the world's largest and most current collection of chemical and related scientific information, including the most authoritative database of chemical substances, the CAS RegistrySM. CAS combines these databases with advanced search and analysis technologies to deliver the most complete, crosslinked and effective digital information environment for scientific research and discovery, including such products as SciFinder, SciFinder Scholar^TM, STN, STN Express and STN AnaVist^TM, among others.