About STN

Reliable information is the basis for business-critical decisions in R&D, for example, in drug development. Patent and information specialists in global enterprises in the chemistry, pharma, and technology sectors, as well as in patent attorney firms, patent offices and research institutions use STN as one of their main sources of information.

A search in STN provides current and complete information thus forming a valid basis for decisions on economic and strategic actions.  We support our customers to

• apply for patents and protect their inventions against imitators
• avoid costly patent litigation
• avert expensive duplicate research
• keep an eye on competitors’ activities in the market
• identify technological trends at an early stage
• find whitespace for new products or research

Patents contain about 80% of the world´s technical and scientific knowledge. However, this knowledge is not easy to retrieve as patents are written in legalese by patent attorneys aiming to secure broadest protection with the least disclosure of the research accepted by the patent authorities. Moreover, patents are published in a multitude of languages, with Asian languages having a share of about 70%.

STN provides the unique combination of value-added content and the corresponding sophisticated feature set to uncover the information needed to make confident strategy, patentability and management decisions:

• the authoritative content from Chemical Abstracts Service and Derwent (Clarivate), with global coverage and editorially enhanced English titles and abstracts as well as specialized chemical indexing  => premier content for efficient retrieval and evaluation from one source saving your valuable time
• the unsurpassed collection of chemical substance databases, including the world´s leading source of substance information CAS Registry (more than 230 million substances), CAS Formulations, CAS Marpat , the Derwent Chemical Resource and the Derwent Markush Resource, as well as Elsevier´s ReaxysFile => the authorative content for complete and efficient chemical substance searching  that is the fastest route for you to get the complete picture
• global patent family and legal event information editorially enhanced by FIZ Karlsruhe and patent full-text in English covering the leading patent authorities including those from China, Korea, Japan and India => enhanced patent information to ensure you are efficiently pointed to the correct content
• altogether a comprehensive content collection of more than 100 databases with the most valuable databases from the world's leading publishers in chemistry, biomedical, pharmaceutical, intellectual property and engineering disciplines, with a total of more than 1.6 billion records! => combining patent and NPL content so you know you did not leave a stone unturned
• sophisticated retrieval features including specialized tools for chemical structure, Markush, and numeric property search to overcome the unique challenges of scientific and technical data in patent and non-patent literature => expert tools to help you find the decisive information in the increasing number of patents and scientific literature
• Scripting to automate recurring searches => supporting your company to get the exact information to the exact person at the earliest point in time

A commercial platform dedicated to privacy ensuring the secrecy of your invention and business decisions.

Since 1984, STN International has been jointly operated and developed by FIZ Karlsruhe and CAS (Chemical Abstracts Service). FIZ Karlsruhe is the service partner for all European customers.

STN goes beyond content and tools. As your partner with more than 35 years of dedicated service to professional searchers, we care about the quality of your search results and are ready to help when you need us:

• Experienced searchers and scientists from our help desk provide expert assistance
• Knowledgeable and dependable STN representatives provide quality service, support and training worldwide
• We meet our customers at STN User Meetings, STN Patent Forums, Workshops and Webinars
• We support our customers with the STNewsline newsletter, detailed training material and user documentation, and extensive online help.

With STN, your search is always 100% confidential.

STN offers system reliability that consistently exceeds 99%.