Finding patent information: Derwent Innovations Index

Derwent Innovations Index (DII) indexes patents from 52 patent-issuing authorities, from 1963- present. It indexes over 97 million individual patent documents. It is produced by Clarivate Analytics and available on the Web of Science platform. It includes titles and abstracts but does not search the full text of a patent document.  It provides links to the full text patent documents. 

DII has many advantages, not least because it is designed for researchers (who are generally not patent experts):

1. Patent titles and abstracts are completely rewritten, making them more concise, descriptive and accessible
2. Derwent's own indexing is added, providing more consistency than IPC. The Derwent Class Codes are for categories of inventions and the Derwent Manual Codes are for novel aspects of an invention and its applications
3. DII provides a single record for an invention with its family of documents brought together in one place
4. DII translates non-English language patents into English 

Additional benefits:

• DII covers all subject areas and it is easy to access and search via the familiar Web of Science interface
• You can use the Web of Science 'Analyse results' button to analyse patents in your results list, generating a visual display that summarises the results, for example by class codes, assignee names (owners/companies), inventors, etc. 
• Cited patents are included and it is possible to sort by times cited

The patent records in Derwent Innovations Index can be searched using the following fields:

• Topic
• Title
• Inventor
• Assignee
• Patent Number
• International Patent Classification

Derwent also use their own classification system and a limited amount of chemical indexing.  All technologies are subdivided in 20 areas, each divided into a further 3 classes. For full details see: