PATENT SEARCHING METHOD AND PATENT SEARCH SYSTEM USING QUERY AUTOMATICALLY CONTAINING HIERARCHICALLY SUBORDINATE PATENT CLASSIFICATIONS WITH OR OPERATOR

摘要

A method and a system for providing a search service by automatically including a patent class code hierarchically subordinated and using an OR operator are provided to search patents by including a lower IPC(International Patent Classification) code hierarchically subordinated to an IPC code when the IPC code is included in a query form. A hierarchical IPC code database(130) stores information for parent/child relation between the IPC codes having a hierarchical structure. A patent information analyzing engine(140) processes the IPC codes by including a lower IPC code processing module(144) and a modified query generating module(146). The lower IPC code processing module obtains the information for a lower IPC code of the received IPC code when the IPC code is included in the received query. The modified query generating module modifies the received query to include the information for the lower IPC code information searched by the lower IPC codes processing module in a search result.