Performing an advanced search

‘Advanced search' enables you to carry out a detailed search using a multitude of search criteria. Advanced searches can be customised to look for specific words, phrases containing a specific string of words or characters and legal norms, among others.

The advanced search option allows you to search for documents within any one of the four tabs: Trade mark decisions, Design decisions, National Court judgments or Preliminary rulings. Note that National Court judgments are only found in the third tab, where the other tabs contain European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), General Court and Court of Justice information.

• Trade mark decisions tab

  In this tab you can apply filters under the following headings:

  • Decision information
  • Owners and representatives
  • Examination
  • Opposition
  • Cancellation
  • Boards of Appeal
  • General Court/Court of Justice

  Each of these sections can be expanded to show further search criteria by clicking on the downward-pointing arrow . To hide a section, click on the upward-pointing arrow .

• Design decisions tab

  In this tab you can apply filters under the following headings:

  • Decision information
  • Application information
  • Invalidity
  • Boards of Appeal
  • General Court/Court of Justice

  Each of these sections can be expanded to show further search criteria by clicking on the downward-pointing arrow . To hide a section, click on the upward-pointing arrow .

• National Court judgments and Preliminary rulings tabs

  All search fields are active by default in these two tabs. Specific search fields may be added multiple times, allowing you to, for example, add additional keywords for the same search.

• Advanced search criteria

  The advanced search option allows you to perform detailed searches for IP-related decisions and judgments in EUIPO's database.

  The default search criteria for the advanced search are displayed in the right-hand side of eSearch Case Law. Additional search criteria are listed on the left-hand side.

  Adding search criteria
  Click on the different search criteria on the left-hand side menu to add them to your search. The corresponding text field will appear immediately.

  Removing search criteria
  To remove search criteria from the list, click on the delete icon ‘X' to the right of the option you would like to remove.

  To clear the data entered in a field/all fields and reset the conditional search operators to their default setting, click on ‘Clear' at the bottom of the table.

  To reset to the default search criteria, click on ‘Reset to default' at the bottom of the table.

• Conditional search operators

  Conditional search operators (and, or, not) enable you to refine a search across various search criteria. They are organised in drop-down menus to the left of the search criteria fields. The following rules apply:

  • and – used to include additional terms in a search;
  • or – used to provide alternative terms in a search;
  • not – used to exclude specific terms in a search.

  Conditional search operators only affect the search criteria listed on the same line.

• Text search options

  The text search criteria uses the following conventions:

  • ‘Text' is defined as any alphanumeric character. Any character can be typed in the text field, but the asterisk (*), question mark (?), hyphen (-) and double quotation marks (" ") are special ‘wild-card' characters with specific functions. For more about them, see the section below on ‘wild-card characters'.
  • The text field is case-insensitive: for example, typing ‘coke' will return the same results as typing ‘Coke'.
  • The search system is insensitive to special characters: for example, typing ‘Müller' will return the same results as typing ‘Muller'.
  • The ‘wild-card' characters (*) or (?) can be used anywhere in a search string where one or more characters may be unknown.
• Wild-card characters

  A ‘wild-card' character can be used to perform special functions in searches.

  Question mark (?)
  This substitutes a single unknown character.

  For example, if you type ‘compl?ment', the search results returned will include both ‘complement' and ‘compliment'.

  More than one question mark can be entered in a search string.

  N.B.: A question mark does not replace a space character (unlike the asterisk).

  Asterisk (*)
  This substitutes one or more unknown characters (including spaces).

  For example, if you type ‘compl*ment', the search results returned will include both ‘compliment' and ‘Complete Management'.

  The asterisk can be used in conjunction with a question mark in a search string.

  For example, typing ‘admis*' will return results containing the words admission, admissible and admissibility.

  Set of double quotation marks (" ")
  Enclosing a word or phrase in double quotation marks instructs the search engine to only return results containing that exact phrase.

  For example, typing "translation of evidence" will return only documents containing the wording ‘translation of evidence', and would not return documents containing ‘translations of evidence' or documents with the word ‘translation' but not followed immediately by ‘of evidence'.