The Lens
 | |
Type of site | Patent Search Service |
|---|---|
| Available in | Multilingual |
| Owner | Cambia |
| URL | The Lens |
| Commercial | Not for profit |
| Registration | No |
| Launched | 2000 |
| Current status | Active |
 | This article may require copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone, or spelling. (January 2025) |
The Lens, formerly called Patent Lens, is a free searcheable online patent and scholarly literature database, provided by Cambia, an Australia-based non-profit organization.
The Lens is an agglomeration database, that takes bibliometric data from other databases (such as Crossref, PubMed, Microsoft Academic and Open Alex ) and combines them into one.
History
[edit]The service was launched in 2000 as the Patent Lens. Over the years conference papers, reports, books and other types of scholarly literature. Funding has been provided by the Rockefeller Foundation in 2000–2004, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2011, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in 2012, Wellcome Trust in 2018, and Lemelson Foundation.[1][2][3][4] The database now contains over 225+ million scholarly works, 127+ million global patent records, and more than 370 million biological sequences.[5]
In 2013, the Patent Lens was officially replaced with Cambia's new site The Lens.[citation needed]
Features
[edit]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.[6]
Patent tutorials[7] are available on the site covering patent claims, freedom to operate, patent inventorship, and continuing patent applications. Plant breeders' rights (PBR), also known as plant variety rights (PVR), are also addressed. This has the intention to "forge a learning resource that participants in innovation systems at all levels... can use to learn of critical and timely issues relevant to improving the public good... by engaging with the patent system".[8]
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 are searchable in Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Spanish.[citation needed]
Response
[edit]The Lens was described in the Journal of the Medical Library Association as the “most comprehensive scholarly literature database, that exceeds in its width and depth two leading commercial databases (Web of Science and Scopus) combined”.[4]
Francis Gurry, director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in March 2009, stated that the landscaping activities of the Patent Lens: in "view of the shared objective of making patent information systems more comprehensive and accessible, and turning raw patent data into useful information resources so as to strengthen the empirical basis of international policy processes".[9]
Nature Biotechnology 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 competitors' inventions.[10]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ "Which institutions are behind The Lens". about.lens.org.
- ^ "Our History - When Was It Started". about.lens.org.
- ^ {Editorial (2006). "Patently transparent." Nature Biotechnology 24(5): 474
- ^ a b Penfold, R. (2020). "Using The Lens database for staff publications." Journal of the Medical Library Association 108(2): 341-344}
- ^ "What". About The Lens.
- ^ Connett Porceddu, M. B.; Bacon, N.; Ashton, D.; Baillie, B.; dos Remedios, N.; Wei, Y.; Jefferson, R. A. (2007). "Constructive approaches to Intellectual Property Complexity in Today's Agricultural Technology World" (PDF). Plant Molecular Breeding. 5 (2): 294–295. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-11-21. Retrieved 2010-01-04.
- ^ "Patent Tutorials and FAQs". Archived from the original on 2010-03-25. Retrieved 2010-01-04.
- ^ Jefferson, Richard (Fall 2006). "Science as Social Enterprise: The CAMBIA BiOS Initiative". Innovations. 1 (4): 13–44. doi:10.1162/itgg.2006.1.4.13. hdl:2123/2686.
- ^ "Patent Lens Letter of Endorsement from Dr. Francis Gurry, Director General, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-10-24. Retrieved 2010-01-04.
- ^ "Patently Transparent". Nature Biotechnology. 24 (5): 474. 2006. doi:10.1038/nbt0506-474a. PMID 16680110.