The Lens -Free & Open Patent and Scholarly Search
‘The Lens’ www.lens.org is a patent database based in Australia that describes itself as “an open global cyberinfrastructure to make the innovation system more efficient and fair, more transparent and inclusive.” It is a worldwide open-access online patent search facility and knowledge resource. Launched in 2000, it allows online access to free full-text patent informatics resources: US patents and applications, European patents and applications, and PCT applications.
It is the only non-profit facility of its kind, with international coverage and links to non-patent literature and tutorials.
In 2013, the Patent lens was officially replaced with the new site ‘The Lens.’ The Lens made improvements in the visual presentation of patent analysis and workspace management. It also features a biological facility with several advanced tools for searching and analyzing sequences found in patents.
Salient Features
Some more salient features of ‘The Lens’ are:
1. Searches on ‘the Lens’ can be done using variables including full-text, title, abstract, lapsed, inventor, applicant, assignee, publication number, and filing number.
2. Lapsed, abandoned, or expired US patents via the INPADOC (International Patent Documentation) are also available.
3. The Lens currently links to regulatory data in the form of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Orange book: Approved drug products with Therapeutic Equivalence Evaluations, Biological sequence data via links to the national center for biotechnology information (NCBI) Gen bank and the patent lens’s gene sequences.
4. The patent lens sequence project commenced in June 2006 provides the only public facility to enable users to explore over 80 million DNA and protein sequences disclosed in patents.
5. Learning resources for the users are available on the site covering topics like patent claims, freedom to operate, patent inventorship, and continuing patent applications.
6. The patent search interface is available in Chinese, English, and French, with the full text of European Patent Office (EPO) patents being searchable in English, French, and German. PCT applications can be accessed in Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Spanish.
7. Lens has over 197 million scholar records sourced from Microsoft Academic, Pubmed, and Cross ref.
8. Lens has over 111 million patent records from over 95 jurisdictions, including 58 M patent families, 550 K biological patents, and 295 patent sequences.
9. Lens fixed visualizations in its March 2019 version. It now provides powerful, flexible visualizations which the users can customize. The primary visualizations provided are horizontal bar charts, vertical bar charts, grouped bar charts, stacked bar charts, line charts, scatter plots, and more.
10. Other than conducting patent searches, the users can create saved searches (with email alerts), saved collections (closed, limited, restricted settings), notes, and more. 50K records per batch can be exported.
11. User interface of the Lens is easy to use and user-friendly.
The Lens is developing very quickly, and there is no reason not to use ‘The Lens,’ given its free-to-use status. This is why Nature Biotechnology has called the Patent Lens ‘a giant leap in the right direction for providing researchers technology transfer offices and company executives a facile means of establishing the novelty of their offerings and the nature of their competitor’s inventions.