AcclaimIP has up to 40 columns of data which you can expose in your search results. Depending on the type of search you are doing, you will want to show different column sets by default. You set your defaults in your Preferences.

However, very often, you may want to add a new column on the fly without having to update your Preferences and redo your search. This is really easy to do in AcclaimIP.

In this article, we'll review some of the basic ideas behind keyword searching.  

Patent documents are full of words.  Patents themselves can be relatively short, such as a two page design patent, while other patents can contain over 1000 pages of text!

Keywords are mainly found in four fields: Title, abstract, claims, and specification (which is also called the description or the disclosure).  When keyword searching, you'll want to keep in mind where in the document you want to search for certain terms, and how the language might vary in different parts of the document.

A keyword can be either a single term, like "fingerprint," "security," or "financial."  A keyword can also be a string such as "light emitting diode," "wireless communication" or "target molecule."

Too often patent searchers rely too heavily on keyword searching.  Keyword searching is amazingly powerful, but it should be used in conjunction with classification, and date searching for optimal results.