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CAS Coverage of Prophetic Substances

CAS covers all characterized substances identified in patents:

• Claimed and exemplified substances with supporting data (CAS REGISTRY^SM)
• Markush structures (MARPAT)

CAS recently expanded coverage to include additional items identified in the Examples section of patents:

• Exemplified prophetic substances - Specific but uncharacterized substances (e.g., reactants, isolated intermediates, products) identified by chemical name or structure, including structures displayed in a table
• Exemplified prophetic uses - Novel but unsubstantiated uses of known substances

On December 12, 2007, CAS began covering exemplified prophetic substances and uses in English-language basic patents.  Coverage was expanded in subsequent months to include:

• French- and German-language basic patents (March 2008)
• Japanese-language basic patents (July 2008)
• English-, French-, and German-language basic patents from 2004-2007 (complete by end of 2008)

CAS currently covers exemplified prophetic substances and uses from all new English-, French-, German-, and Japanese-language basic patents.

Newly identified prophetic substances are assigned CAS Registry Numbers, added to REGISTRY, and indexed in CA^SM/CAplus^SM.  Reactions involving prophetic substances (whether reactants, intermediates, or products) are added to CASREACT.

CAS indexing of prophetic substances and uses in CAplus is considered supplemental to standard patent indexing.  It does not fall under the CAS timeliness guarantee of full indexing within 27 days of receipt of patents from the 9 major patent offices.

On STN, the CA/CAplus roles thesaurus has been updated with a new term for prophetic substances, the PRPH super role.  Additional roles may be assigned for uses of prophetic substances.  For more information, see the CAS roles in CA/CAplus Quick Reference Card.