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Help: Frequently Asked Questions on Search Results

Table of Contents


  • How do I view the results of my search?

    From the "Search Results" Screen, you can view the details of an individual patent document (including bibliographic information, abstract, and claim) by clicking on the patent document number.

  • How do I view the patent document images?

    You may view a patent document image by simply by clicking on the hyperlink of the document that you want to see. You may also download the images in Adobe's portable document format (PDF) by clicking on the hyperlink "PDF" of the document. The number of pages of each document is displayed. This allows you to determine the size without retrieving the files. If the images are not available for a document, the hyperlink will not be available and the reference N/A will be displayed in the number of pages.

  • How do I get back to my "Search Results" screen?

    Since following a hyperlink will always replace the current Window's contents, your search results are replaced. Your browser's "Back" button can be used to return to search results. However, if you chose to open a hyperlink in a new browser window, the browser's history is disconnected. In this case, you may find a hyperlink above the footer that will take you back to your search results from a patent summary page or back to the patent summary page if you were on the financial transactions, claims, or image browsing pages.

  • How do I print the details of a patent document I'm viewing?

    Most browsers allow you to print the page you are viewing. Choose "Print" from the "File" menu on the browser you are using. The best way to print patent images is to download the images in PDF format, and to print offline. PDF Readers.

  • How do I order copies of patent documents?

    You can send an e-mail to cipoipdata-opicdonneespi@ised-isde.gc.ca.

  • How can I share a hyperlink to a patent without the recipient viewing my search query?

    In order to support search term highlighting, your search query is captured in the URLs for the patent summary, financial transactions, claims and image browsing pages. If you wish to bookmark or share a URL of a page without the search query included, you may follow the link to this page hyperlink. The resulting page will not have your search query or search term highlighting included. To further protect your privacy, you should ensure that any caches of web pages made by your browser are removed (especially if you are using a public terminal).

  • How can I zoom into an image beyond 100% in order to see it more clearly?

    To keep response times short for all users of the Canadian Patent Database, zoom levels have been limited to 12%, 25%, 50% and 100% of the original scanned image. If you wish to scale the image to other sizes, you may do so using your browser capabilities (if provided) or saving the image locally for further manipulation.

  • I did a search that resulted in over 300 hits. The result lists the 50 most relevant ones. How do I view the rest?

    When you compose a search, set the "Maximum Results" to 500 and click on the "Submit Query" button.

    If your search results in a long list of hits, try to narrow down your search by including more search terms or by indicating a time period.