Any search that has the capability to explore a database with the aid of chemical formulas and structures, as opposed to simple keywords is a Chemical Search. This search has the built-in capability of preprocessing the database to recognize chemical units and convert them to a standardized depiction. In order to achieve a meticulous search, sophisticated parsing is necessary.

An example that explains the difference between a conventional keyword search and a chemical search:

You need to find all references to "Tylenol" in the database. With the aid of a keyword search, you typically would enter "Tylenol," and all the documents containing that word would be returned as a response to your query. Now here is the catch - in a conventional keyword search, any document that does contain the word "Tylenol" would be missed, even if they included its actual chemical name. For example, "acetaminophen" is the common chemical name for Tylenol. The chemical name is N-acetyl-para-aminophenol. Not one of these would be found by a typical keyword search.

Chemical search is paramount if you need the search to be thorough. Most chemicals have different synonyms making it virtually impossible to perform a successful search using a conventional keyword search. For example, Phenergan is also called Promethazine (dimethyl[1-(10H-phenothiazin-10-yl)propan-2-yl]amine) and there are classes of chemical compounds that have several hundred synonyms.

Legal Advantage – Your chemical search made easy.

A chemical search is the only sure-fire way to ensure a complete and thorough search. And our subject matter experts in organic chemistry, Biotechnology, and genetics ensure the searches are flawless. Our experts have access to chemical structure search databases through STN that include CAPLUS REGISTRY and MARPAT, as well as industry leading patent and prior art databases such as MicroPatent and Thomson Innovation.