CAMBIA's Patent Lens.

Some time back, Michael Gorman of the Tech LawForum had notified AT! about a company called CAMBIA, located in Canberra, Australia.  CAMBIA has established the “Patent Lens” project; a free, searchable patent database designed primarily for bio-tech patent searching. 

According to CAMBIA, the Patent Lens resource comprises a fully text-searchable patents database, and contains over 5,500,000 patents and patent applications from the PCT, US, and EPO databases.  Patent Lens includes the life sciences collections from these jurisdictions and has recently added all patent classifications from the US applications and granted patents.

We’ve had an opportunity to try out the Patent Lens search engine, and found it fairly useful.  The service allows keyword searching of the full text, as well as specific sections of patents and patent applications. It also provides easy access to INPADOC family and legal status data.  From a biotech and life sciences standpoint, the service now appears to include a search function for protein and DNA sequences.

Further notable features are: 1) a “predicted expiry date” function (although the function admittedly does not take into account features such as terminal disclaimers, term adjustments, etc.) that allows searching for patents that are in-force versus expired; and 2) RSS alerts for automatic updates on patent search queries.