Differences between USPTO and PrArAr

[slifty]

It looks like the Prior Art Archive search syntax is slightly different than those documented at the USPTO search site (see the resources in #3).

What is the reason for those differences; is there a different USPTO standard than the one listed in the USPTO resources? Do we really want to diverge from that standard?

Specific differences I see so far

• PrArAr lists several operators (e.g. ADJ, NEAR, WITH, SAME) that are not in USPTO.
• PrArAr seems to prepend @ before field names, wheras USPTO uses a / syntax (e.g. @RLAD vs RLAD/
• USPTO lets you look up by cpc code using the CPC/ field, PrArAr seems to support a .cpc format
• PrArAr supports some shortcuts such as | and ~
• PrArAr supports something called BOOST (and a shortcut of ^)
• PrArAr supports $n which is like $ but with a set number of characters.

[slifty]

I spoke with Shikha about this and got a copy of the documentation that they used to work on the original Prior Art Archive query parser. There are internal documents that are more robust (and slightly different in some ways) than the USPTO patent search instructions. I'll add those to a /docs directory separately and use that to close this issue.

[slifty]

There are still some oddities, which are a bit more explicit when you look at the sample queries provided in #10

For example, none of the documentation talks about the use of @ (e.g. in @ad<"20141215" @rlad<"20041215" which is the first sample query)

It also appears that the expected default in parsing is to treat multiple terms with an OR not an AND which contradicts this documented requirement:

Here are some of the documentation files I'm working from:

Filter class & Parboiled Parser.docx east west operators.pdf