Canadian patent information missing from major databases?

Simmons, Edlyn, HMR/US (edlynsimmons@hmri.com)
Wed, 9 Jul 1997 09:12:20 -0500

Having been asked about the coverage of a family of patents we've been
tracking, I noticed for the first time that Canada had been designated
in the PCT application, but that no Canadian publication number was
included in the Derwent family. So I did an assignee search in the
Canadian Intellectual Property Office's Canadian Patents database on the
web:
http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/sc_innov/patent/engdoc/cover.html

And sure enough, one of the patents I retrieved was the missing
published application, laid open on February 17, 1994. Being suspicious
by nature, I checked for the patent number in both the Derwent and
INPADOC databases, and neither of them had a posting for it. My INPADOC
search was an EXPAND, and I noticed that there were patents with
slightly higher and slightly lower numbers.

I suspect that the problem might be that CIPO wasn't providing PCT
transfer information to the databases at the time this patent
application was laid open. If this is true, we all should all be
checking the CIPO database to fill in the holes in our Derwent/INPADOC
family searches.

Questions: Is it true that Canadian PCT information hasn't been entered
into the patent family databases? If so, is that still true, or when
did the information begin to be supplied? And, since CIPO obviously has
the information in its files, would it be possible for Derwent and
EPIDOS to obtain the missing information?

Edlyn Simmons
edlynsimmons@hmri.com
Hoechst Marion Roussel, Inc.
Cincinnati, OH 45215-6300