Entering assignee search criteria manually
You can type Individual assignees as well as assignee groups directly into the Filters box.
You must define an assignee group before you can enter it manually into the Filters box.
When you enter an assignee name that contains several words, an <AND> Boolean operator is assumed between them. In case of assignee group names, the exact spelling of the entire name is matched.
It is possible for an assignee name to be misspelled in the original patent. In this case, it is ignored by your search if you do not enter the misspelled variation explicitly.
We recommend that you enter assignee and group names manually only when you know their exact spelling. Since all spelling variations are captured in the Select Assignees dialog box, you should use this dialog box instead to specify assignee criteria.
We also recommend that you make your query as restrictive as possible by entering all the words in the assignee name. When you enter several words in an assignee name, such as Honda Denshi Kabushiki Kaisha, they are separated by an <AND> Boolean operator. Any assignee name that includes all the specified words—with the exact spelling and regardless of word order—is included in the search.
When specifying assignee criteria manually, you can enter up to 256 characters.
To specify a group name, you must type <group> after the group name. For example:
Honda <group>
Angle brackets (< >) are required. There must be a space between the group name and the string <group>.
If you specify several assignees or groups, you separate them with either <OR> or <AND> Boolean operators. The angle brackets (< >) must enclose the Boolean operator in order for it to be treated as a Boolean operator instead of as a query word. For example:
Honda <group> <OR> Mitsubishi <AND> Nissan
Here the standard order of precedence is followed, and the expression is evaluated as:
Honda <group> <OR> (Mitsubishi <AND> Nissan)
To override the default order of precedence, you can enter parentheses to group conditions in the desired order of evaluation.
You can enter a semicolon ( ; ) instead of <OR>—they are equivalent. For example, (Honda <OR> Mitsubishi) is the same as (Honda; Mitsubishi).