Japanese Prior Art Search Resource

Patent databases

• PATOLIS
  One of the major Japanese commercial patent databases providing patent, utility model, design, and trade mark, file wrapper/file history information in Japanese only. We often use this database in our class searches (FT theme, FI code and IPC).


• NRI
  Another very important major commercial databases providing patent, utility model, design, and trade mark, file wrapper/file history information in Japanese only. This one has very powerful full texts search functions. We often use this database in full text search using key word strings.


• NEF-NET
  This is a commercial online Japanese search engine providing information on published Japanese patent and utility model documents published after 1993.


• JPDS
  A paid online database providing intellectual property information about Japanese patents, utility models, designs, and trademarks


• IPDL
  IPDL stands for Industrial Property Digital Library. This is a free database provided by Japanese Patent Office (JPO). Although user interface and function are not as powerful as commercial databases, this is still a very useful search engine in preliminary searches to check strategies and search strings/formula, also for Japanese patent number search.


• GetIPDL
  This is a patent download tool for downloading documents from patent offices.

Non-patent literature databases

• JDream-II
  This is a non-patent literature search engine provided by Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). JDream-II is actually a bundle of non-patent literature search engines consisting of a few databases. Two of the most important databases in this bundle are JSTPlus, which is the largest commercial non-patent scientific literature database, and JMEDPlus, which is the largest commercial Japanese non-patent medical/pharmaceutical literature databases.


• Medical Online
  Paid online medical and pharmaceutical related literature provider. Stored literatures not as broad as JMEDPlus but can get PDF online although expensive ($20-30).


• JST copy
  JST's non-patent literature copying service provider. Cost for getting one copy of non-patent literature including copyright fee and labour cost both payable to JST is $20-30 on average depending on the length of the literature.


• G-search
  Largest paid online Japanese business information database bundle providing news papers, magazines, books, company information search.


• JAPICDOC
  Databases of Japanese medical and pharmaceutical literatures, which covers 416 journals of medical, dental and pharmaceutial sciences, out of which 402 are Japanese domestical journals and 14 are overseas journals. Articles published from 1979 are stored in the database, with newly addition of about 1,300 new articles monthly, or 15,000 annually.


• Other Japanese non-patent literature databases
  We also use a few other supplemental databases including J-Global, READ, NINii, GENii, Kaken, etc.

Japanese Non-patent Literature Retrival Services

• Document Retriveal Service at Japan Pharmaceutial Information Center (JPIC)
  Document retrival services for scientific articles published in journals of medical, dental and pharmaceutial sciences


• JST Copy Center
  Japanese non-patent literature copy services for scientific articles published in journals stored at Japan Science and Technology Agency. A service provided for JST's registered members.

After locating prior art in Japanese, Chinese or Korean, our experienced and qualified professional translators can translate these documents into English. Or if you need to have a quick read at these documents to know what is been said in these documents without spending human translation cost, we can use computer to perform machine translation for you.

We also have access to Chinese and Korean databases, both patent and non-patent literatures. Chinese Prior Art Databases. Please feel free to contact us to learn how we can help your litigation strategy or licensing by locating relevant reference documents for you.