Patent Public Search’s Advanced Search interface supports the following operators.
| Operator | Use in Patent Public Search |
|---|---|
| OR | Two terms joined by "OR" means at least one of the terms must occur in the document. |
| AND | Two terms joined by "AND" must occur within the same document. |
| NOT | The first term must occur, the second term must not. |
| XOR | Two terms joined by "XOR" means at least one of the terms must occur in the document, but not both terms. |
| WITHn | Terms joined with WITH must occur within [n] sentences of each other. Patent Public Search does not consider a period at the end of an abbreviation as the end of a sentence. For example, if a document contained the sentence “The floor could be manufactured from wood, plastic, laminate, etc. and then be installed with glue”, a search for “floor WITH glue” would return hits in Patent Public Search. |
| SAMEn | Two terms occur within n paragraphs of each other. It is very similar to WITH[n] but the searches occur over n paragraphs rather than sentences. Maximum value of N is 25. |
| ADJn | Two terms must occur within [n] terms of each other, in order and within the same sentence. |
| NEARn | Two terms must occur within [n] terms of each other and within the same sentence, but order is not relevant. |
| x NOT SAME y | The two terms are not contained in the same paragraph. |
| x NOT WITH y | The two terms are not contained in the same sentence. Patent Public Search does not consider a period at the end of an abbreviation as the end of a sentence. For example, if a document contained the sentence “The floor could be manufactured from wood, plastic, laminate, etc. and then be installed with glue,” a search for “floor NOT WITH glue” would exclude this document in the results in Patent Public Search. |
| x NOT ADJ y | The two terms are not contained adjacent to each other in the specific order in the same sentence. |
| x NOT NEAR y | The two terms are not contained adjacent to each other in any order in the same sentence. For example, a search for “blue NOT NEAR green” would not exclude a document containing “blue with green” but would exclude a document containing “green not blue.” |
Operator Precedence
The precedence for the order of operations in Patent Public Search’s Advanced Search interface is ADJ > NEAR > WITH > SAME