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• CA/CAplus CLASS Display Streamlined with Removal of Pre-IPC 8 Data Fields
• 50,000 World Traditional Medicine (WTM) Patents Now Available in CAplus
• STN Crossover Limits for CAS Registry Numbers Increase to 500,000 for Six Key Databases
• EMBASE Adds Unique Records from MEDLINE, Expanding Coverage back to 1948
• MEDLINE Coverage is Extended back to 1947

See the following database news from FIZ Karlsruhe

• DWPI: New display format ALLSTR available
• DWPI: U.S. National Patent Classification Thesaurus Added
• PATDPAFULL Has Been Enhanced with Front Page Images

For additional information about these and other STN databases, refer to the STN Database Summary Sheets page. 

CA/CAplus CLASS Display Streamlined with Removal of Pre-IPC 8 Data Fields

Pre-IPC 8 fields (IC, ICM, ICS, ICA, ICI) have been removed from CLASS displays, including CLASS data displayed as part of the predefined display formats: 

• STD / ISTD
• ALL / IALL / DALL
• MAX / IMAX / DMAX
• CLASS 

These data in these fields were redundant with those appearing in the IPCI field.

Pre-IPC 8 fields are still available for searching and custom display for pre-IPC 8 patents (from 2005 and earlier). 

50,000 World Traditional Medicine (WTM) Patents Now Available in CAplus

A total of 22,000 World Traditional Medicine (WTM) patents from many different countries were recently added to the CAplus archive, increasing the total number of these unique patents to 50,000. WTM records expand coverage of this unique type of prior art, which is gaining in importance to the pharmaceutical and consumer products industries.

In 2007, CAS added 13,000 WTM patent records primarily from China to CAplus. An additional 15,000 WTM records from China, Japan, the United States, and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WO) were added in 2008.

Listed below are some characteristics of the most recently added WTM patents:   

• can originate from any country, including the U.S., France, and Canada   
• can be older material, back as far as 1986, and as new as 2006
• have Supplementary Terms (ST) but not Index Terms (IT). The ST indexing typically contains the Latin names of plants and animals used in creating the preparations and remedies documented in these patents
• have "nonindexed and nosection" as the values in the File Segment (FS) field

Increase your STN search power by taking advantage of the new expanded crossover limits for CAS Registry Numbers.  Now you can crossover 500,000 CAS Registry Numbers at one time from the CAS REGISTRY to six key STN databases instead of the previous limit of 300,000. The new limit applies to the following databases:

There is a charge to crossover each CAS Registry Number into non-CAS databases. Enter HELP COST in the CAS REGISTRY or ZREGISTRY databases for details.

EMBASE Adds Unique Records from MEDLINE, Expanding Coverage back to 1948

EMBASE has expanded its indexing collection to more than 7,000 journals and increased the size of its database by 8.4 million records going back to 1948 by adding unique records from MEDLINE.

MEDLINE records will now be included as part of the regular daily updates for EMBASE. The unique MEDLINE records retrieved from EMBASE differ from their counterparts in MEDLINE by having EMTREE indexing.

To accommodate the new MEDLINE records, several new features have been added to EMBASE:

• New Copyright MEDLINE (CP) field indicates that the record came from MEDLINE. This field is part of the BIB (default) display format.
   
• New File Segment (FS) Data The term MEDLINE appears in the /FS field when the record is a unique MEDLINE record. This field is both searchable and displayable.
   
• New values for SET RANGE Enter SET RANGE=MEDL to restrict retrieval to unique MEDLINE records only. Enter SET RANGE=NMED to restrict retrieval to traditional EMBASE items only

• New update fields The Update Date MEDLINE (/UPAL) and Entry Date MEDLINE (/EDAL) allow customer current-awareness alerts (SDIs) to retrieve both traditional EMBASE records and unique MEDLINE records.

Please note the impact on your EMBASE SDI search strategies:

• Including the Update Date (/UP) or Entry Date (/ED) fields in your EMBASE SDI search strategy will now restrict your retrieval to traditional EMBASE records only.
• If you want to include MEDLINE unique records in your SDI, you must update your search strategies with the new /UPAL and /EDAL field.
• If you take no action, your SDIs will run as always with no unique MEDLINE data included.

MEDLINE Coverage is Extended back to 1947

The MEDLINE backfile has been extended back to 1947, adding an extra 63,839 records to MEDLINE's coverage.

These records are not eligible for current-awareness alerts (SDIs).