What are combined bibliographic and patent database searches?
Last updated on April 15, 2026
When you search bibliographic database(s) and patent database(s) together, you will notice search field changes on your Quick search page and facet changes in the Refine results feature of the Search results.
The following fields will be available for searching:
- Subject/Title/Abstract - search keywords in the records' subject field, title, or abstracts
- Abstract - search keywords in the abstract only
- Author/Inventor (inventor) - use a keyword search for an author name or inventor name
- Author affiliation/Assignee (assignee) - use a keyword search for an author affiliation or assignee (institution or company to which the author belongs)
- Title - search keywords in titles
Note: Author/Inventor and Author affiliation/Assignee will not be available in the Quick search dropdown menu field list if the CBNB database is included in your multiple database search query, as these two fields do not apply to this database.
The indexes presented in a combined search are Author/Inventor and Affiliation/Assignee. When searching these indexes, you will be able to conduct a search on author and inventor names as well as assignee and affiliation names. These indexes accommodate both patent data and bibliographic data.
When you search patents and bibliographic information together, the facets for refining your search change accordingly to accommodate data retrieved from different databases. The following facets will change:
Database: This facet reveals how many records were retrieved from each database you selected for your search.
The facet displays the first five databases. Click View more to see all the other databases for this facet if applicable.
You can refine your search by selecting one or more databases and including or excluding them. The number in parentheses identifies how many records were retrieved.
Author/Inventor: In a combined patent/bibliographic search, this facet now contains the authors and inventors with the largest number of documents.
Note: When selecting an author/inventor whose publications are found within a single type of database (e.g., patents or bibliographic), the facets automatically change accordingly. For example, if you select an author who appears only in the Compendex database and does not have any patent records, the facets on your search result screen will show only those applicable to Compendex, omitting any facets that are derived from the patents' databases. In order to go back and see the patents' facets, you will need to exclude that author from your search.
In a combined patent/bibliographic search, this facet will list the most prominent institutions and companies that publish patents or other scientific documents on the topic of interest.
This facet reveals which types of documents were most commonly published on the topic. The number in parentheses is the number of records retrieved for each document type. From this list, you can isolate certain types of documents to be searched by selecting them and including them in your search. You can select multiple document types to include or exclude from your search.
Note: This facet is named ‘Patent type’ when only the patent databases are used for your search.
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