CAS coverage of global patent authorities has expanded to 61 with the addition of Costa Rica

On July 12, 2010, CAS enhanced its extensive patent coverage by adding patent and patent family information from the Costa Rica Registry of Industrial Properties. Also at this time, CAS expanded coverage of the Argentina National Institute of Industrial Properties.

Patent publications have gained importance in recent years as a growing source of unique substance information, outpacing journal publications. In fact, patent disclosures contributed most of the new small molecules added to the CAS REGISTRY in 2009.

Costa Rican patent documents expand CAS’ already substantial coverage of patent authorities from smaller countries. Patent information from these smaller patent authorities is largely inaccessible to many patent searchers, and CAS is one of only a few information providers that cover smaller patent authorities.

With CAS’ broad coverage of 61 worldwide patent authorities, you can quickly access multiple sources to obtain new and unique substance information.

CAS’ coverage of Costa Rican patent documents includes kind codes A (patent application) and U (utility model application) from 2007 to date.

For the Republic of Argentina, CAS now covers the following kind codes from 2006 to date:

• A1 (patent applications)
• A2 (divisional patent application)
• A3 (additional patent application)
• A4 (independent utility model application)
• A6 (additional utility model application)

Costa Rican equivalents are now appearing in patent families, and Argentinean equivalents will be loaded in the next few weeks. Basic patents from the two countries are published in Spanish and will not appear in CA/CAplus until indexing is complete, along with an English title and abstract.