Chinese Prior Art Databases and Resource

• PatentStar
  This commercial database is developed and operated by Beijing Xinfa Zhixin Corp. PatentStar consists of patent search system, image search system. and machine translation system, among which, the patent search system is the core. IPC, abstract, keyword, inventor, applicant, filing date, publication date etc. can be searched. This is the most user-friendly Chinese patent search system.


• State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO)
  The SIPO database and searh system covers 3 kind of Chinese industry properties: Invention, Utility Model, Design. From 1985 to 2010, there are 7,037,574 applications filed at SIPO for these 3 kinds of Chinese patents. Only limited functions can be used but it is a free system. A good supplemental Chinese IP source.


• Patent Information Service Plateform
  This database, which is also called CNIPR (China Intellectual Property Right Net), is operated by China Intellectual Property Publishing House. CNIPR is a commercial Chinese IP database that can search full text document as well as IPC class. However, there is no function to separate valid (in force) patents, expired patents, patent application publications. The search covers all document types.


• SooPat
  This is another Chinese patent database. Bibliographic information, title and abstract can be searched, but there is no full text document search function.


• Patent Search and Service System of SIPO
  This is another database provided by SIPO. Title, abstract, keyword and full text document can be searched. Only abstrats can be retrived. To view and download full text documents, a different tool has to be used.


• Chinese Patent Net (cnpatent, 中国专利网)
  Only limited search functions available. Not user-friendly.

• China Knowledge Resource Integrated Database (CNKI, 中国知网)
  This is a commercial Chinese non-patent literature search engine provided by Tsinghua Tongfang Knowledge Network Technology Co., Ltd.(Beijing). This web-based tool covers 9,305 journals, which is over 90% of all official journals published in China. Full coverage of academic/scientific journals and selected journals in arts, culture and other fields. Doctoral dissertations and master's theses are also covered. Archival and copy services are also provided. A very wealth source of scientific literatures in Chinese search.


• Wanfang Data
  This is another very useful source of Chinese NPL (scientific literature). Wanfang Data is provided by Wanfan Data group, an affiliate of the Chinese Ministry of Science & Technology, which provides access to a wide range of NPL database resources, serving as a gateway to Chinese NPL covering culture, medicine, business, science, engineering, etc. There are 5 featured databases under Wanfang: Chinese Studies Online (CSO), China Business Reference (CBR), China Medical Collections(CMC), China Legal Collections(CLC), and Science & Technology of China (STOC), all can be searched cross-databases.


• Zhilai Paper (LW20)
  A Chinese NPL retrival system, but coverage is limited.