New Interactive Claim Viewer in EPFULL and PCTFULL Makes Claim Analysis More Efficient

Imagine your CAS STNext search has retrieved a patent application of particular interest to you, but that patent includes many claims. It takes time for you to determine:

- Which of the claims are independent claims?
- Which dependent claims belong to which independent claim?

The new Interactive Claim Viewer answers these questions for you! It provides a graphical tree display of a patent’s claims, clearly identifying the independent claims and their related dependent claims. At launch in December 2022, the new feature is available in EPFULL and PCTFULL, but there are plans to extend it to other patent databases.

To access the Interactive Claim Viewer, left click on the patent number in the PI field. You’ll see a new option in the menu: Claims Viewer. Click on Claims Viewer, and a new window opens with a graphical depiction of the claims tree, as well as the text of the claims. 

In the original patent application, the claims appear in numerical order. But in the Interactive Claim Viewer, the claims are displayed so that each independent claim is grouped together with its dependent claims. This makes patent claims analysis more efficient.

You can control the display of the claims data, using the +/-  toggle.

- Use the + toggle to display the dependent claims
- Use the – toggle to collapse the text of the dependent claims

For further information, see the Interactive Claim Viewer story dated December 19, 2022 under What’s New in STNext.