Major Overhaul to the USPTO’s Public Patent Searching ToolsOctober 11, 2022

On September 30, the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) new Patent Public Search tool (PPUBS) replaced four legacy tools—Public-Examiner’s Automated Search Tool (PubEAST), Public-Web-based Examiner’s Search Tool (PubWEST), Patent Full-Text and Image Database (PatFT), and Patent Application Full-Text and Image Database (AppFT).

Patent Public Search provides more convenient, remote, and robust full-text searching of all U.S. patents and U.S. pre-grant publications. The new tool streamlines the search process for users, provides alternatives for existing services, and incorporates new features. The USPTO explains that the new tool provides users with the convenience or similar functionality as those used by our examiners.

In the past, users could only access legacy search tools PubEAST and PubWEST at a USPTO facility like the headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. With the launch of the new tool, remote searching is now available to all users with internet access. Additional benefits include: (i) layouts: multiple layouts with multiple tools to provide more data at once; (ii) highlighting: multi-color highlighting that can be viewed across multiple devices and turned on or off; (iii) ability to tag documents into multiple groups that can be renamed and color coordinated; (iv) ability to add notes to an image with options to include tags, relevant claims, and highlights; (v) robust full-text searching of U.S. patents and published applications; and (vi) same searching syntax as PubEAST and PubWEST.

You can directly access U.S. patents and U.S. pre-grant publications via Patent Public Search. You can also set up links for direct document access to U.S. patents and U.S. pre-grant publications on a webpage or document. You can find a step-by-step guide to performing these functions in the Patent Public Search-Setting up external searches PDF.

If you have questions about locating documents via Patent Public Search, please do not hesitate to consult an MVS attorney.

Gregory Lars Gunnerson is an Intellectual Property Attorney in the Mechanical and Electrical Patent Practice Groups at McKee, Voorhees & Sease, PLC. For additional information please visit www.ipmvs.com or contact Lars directly via email at gregory.gunnerson@ipmvs.com.

← Return to Filewrapper

Stay in Touch

Receive the latest news and updates from us and our attorneys.

Sign Up