The MIT Libraries have contracted with the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) to provide access to the Derwent Innovations Index (DII), a new web-based resource that allows searching of patent literature from 40 patent-issuing authorities.
Coverage for many source patents begins from 1963. Using the same interface that ISI developed for its powerful index to journal literature, Web of Science, the Derwent Innovations Index provides easy access to worldwide patent data, while the hypertext links make it easy to navigate the citations -- forward in time to citing patents and backward in time to cited references.
The DII (in which patent citations are processed from the European Patent Office, Germany, Japan, the World Patent Office, the United Kingdom and the United States) offers a number of powerful features. For example, each record includes a listing and link to any other patent in the database which cites it. Links to Web of Science are available through the literature citations from patents in DII, and cited patents in the Web of Science will link to DII. Timeliness is two to 10 weeks from issue date for major patent-issuing authorities, and DII is updated weekly.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on April 12, 2000.
