International Designs Bulletin – Help

Database content

The International Designs Bulletin Database includes data relating to the international registrations under the 1960 and/or the 1999 Act of the Hague Agreement, including both the bibliographic data and the reproductions of the designs, and other recordings made in the International Register as of issue No. 4/2004.

Search functionality

The search page provides a simple interface to the database for fielded term searches only. There are 5 steps to using the search page:

  1. Select the Bulletin number and the Recording Type for which you want to search.
  2. Choose how you want the results ranked by selecting either the Individually or the By Chapter Radio button.
  3. Enter your search term or terms into the input box to the right of the field you are interested in searching.
  4. Select an operator from menus to the left of the field or fields you are searching.
  5. Hit the Search button.

Tips!

  • If you want to search for a single term or all the terms together, you can leave the operator at its default value (AND).
  • The search is case-insensitive. Searching for Needle and searching for needle will produce the same results.
  • The Start At box allows you to enter a number to skip to in your search results list. For long search results lists, entering '250' in the Start At box is easier than hitting the 'Next 50 Hits' button 5 times.

Search features

Field searching

The search page allows you to search within the individual fields found within the documents. The search page contains one text entry box for each searchable field. Also, you can select any field you want to search from the selection menu. This is useful to search for more than one term in a particular field. To narrow your search to hits occurring within a single field, just enter the term into the appropriate box, or select the desired field from the menu.

Phrase searching

Using the search page, it is not necessary to surround your term with quotation marks ("). The system will automatically search for your terms occurring together as a phrase. If you wish to specify more than one term in a particular field, you should use multiple term entry boxes.

Proximity Searching

The search page allows you to search for terms that occur near one another (currently, within 5 words).

Example: If you entered toy in the Indication of Products box, animal* in the next box, changed the associated field to Indication of Products, and selected NEAR from the next menu, you'd receive back a list of all documents which contain the words toy and animals in the Indication of Products field, and in close proximity (5 words) to one another. Contrast this with selecting 'and', where the two terms are not required to be in proximity to one another.

Right truncation

The search page supports right truncation in queries. This allows you to use a wildcard on the right side of a search term, to match words that start with a certain string.

Example: If you searched for elec*, you'd get many hits, as anything with words starting with 'elec' anywhere in their text would match. Words like electric, electronic and election would all match.

Simple boolean expressions

You can use the search page to compose multiple term boolean queries with simple, easy-to-use tools. A boolean query is simply one where you specify that a specific relationship must exist between any two terms you provide. You can specify that either both must be true (the AND operator) at least one must be true (the OR operator), the first must be true and the second false (the ANDNOT operator), that at least one must be true, but not both (the XOR operator) or that the two terms must occur near (within 5 words of) each other (the NEAR operator). To apply an operator to a pair of terms, select the operator to the left of the second term in the pair. An example will help clarify.

Example: If you entered "phillip morris" in the Holder box, cigarette in the Indication of Products box and selected AND from the menu to the left of Indication of Products, you'd receive back a list of all documents which contain the phrase "phillip morris" in the Holder field, and the word cigarette in the Indication of Products field.

Search statistics

Detailed information about your results are available by clicking on the 'Search Summary' link at the top of each search results page. This will show how many times each of your terms occurred in how many documents, and the intermediate results of applying all of your specified boolean operators. Also, the total time required to conduct the search is listed. This information should assist you in refining your search.