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CAS Sets New Timeliness Standard

CAS Sets New Timeliness Standard by Making Chinese Patent Records Available More Than 130 Days Sooner Than Competitive Services

Columbus, OH, May 20, 2006 - CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society, released statistics regarding its coverage of patent information that demonstrate substantial gains in the timely availability of records online in the CA^SM and CAplus^SM databases. CAS announced that it now makes Chinese patent records available more rapidly than any other database producer.

CAS' ability to provide Chinese patent records more rapidly is due largely to new processing software tools and procedures developed in-house at CAS. "We now have SIPO Chinese patent records available for searching and retrieval in the CA/CAplus databases in STN and SciFinder more than 130 days sooner than any other online scientific database," said Dr. Catharina Maulbecker, CAS Vice President, Marketing & Sales. "Improved timeliness of that magnitude can make a crucial difference to our customers' intellectual property and research activities."

Patents from the People's Republic of China have grown steadily as a percentage of total patent records in CAS databases, increasing from 3.7 percent in 2001 to 12.5 percent by the end of 2005. (See Chart A.) The People's Republic of China is now the fourth largest source of patent records among the patent-issuing authorities covered by CAS. China is exceeded only by the patent offices of Japan, the World Intellectual Property Organization, and the United States.

 

In addition to providing more rapid access to Chinese patent records, CAS makes the patents of nine patent issuing authorities available with record timeliness. Bibliographic information appears in CAplus within 2 days of the patents' issuance from the patent offices of Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, the UK and the US, plus the European Patent Office and the World Intellectual Property Organization. Records completely indexed by CAS scientists are available within 27 days. (See Chart B.) In all , CAS covers 50 patent-issuing authorities.

 

"Recognizing the key scientific information in patents is challenging. But CAS scientists analyze patents intensively and their thorough indexing makes the essential content readily accessible to scientists and intellectual property professionals," Maulbecker explained.

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 Registry^SM. CAS combines these databases with advanced search and analysis technologies to deliver the most complete and effective digital information environment for scientific research and discovery, including such products as SciFinder, SciFinder Scholar, STN, STN Express and STN AnaVist, among others.