Method and apparatus for facilitating patent searching

摘要

One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that displays a patent. This system provides a user interface, which is configured to display panels containing different sections of the patent, wherein the panels for the different sections of the patent are visible at the same time. In this way, a user does not have to navigate to view the different sections of the patent. In a variation on this embodiment, the panels for the different sections of the patent can include: (1) a patent summary panel, which displays the abstract of the patent and also displays information associated with the patent, including: the patent number, the filing date, the issue date, the names of the inventors and the assignee; (2) a citations panel which displays documents which are cited by the patent; and (3) a claims panel which displays one or more claims in the patent.

主权项

1. An apparatus comprising:
a memory to store:
information associated with a first layout and a second layout,
the first layout comprising two or more panels for presenting two or more different sections of a patent, andthe second layout comprising a single panel associated with a portion of a scanned version of the patent; and a processor, at least partially implemented in hardware, to:
obtain patent data associated with the patent,
the patent being identified based on a search query that includes at least one term, andthe patent data including information associated with the scanned version of the patent,store the patent data in the memory,form a results document based on the patent data,
the processor, when forming the results document, being further to:
determine a quantity of data included in the patent data,automatically select a layout for the results document, from the first layout and the second layout, based on the quantity of data included in the patent data, the first layout being selected when the quantity of data satisfies a threshold, and the second layout being selected when the first layout is not selected,populate the selected layout based on the patent data, andhighlight occurrences, in the populated layout, of the atleast one term of the search query, to form the results document, andprovide the results document for display by a client device.