The Lens
 | |
Type of site | Patent Search Service |
|---|---|
| Available in | Multilingual |
| Owner | Cambia |
| URL | The Lens |
| Commercial | Not for profit |
| Registration | No |
| Launched | 2000 |
| Current status | Active |
The Lens (formerly Patent Lens) is a free, searcheable online database of patents and scholarly literature, provided by Cambia, a non-profit organization based in Australia.
The Lens functions as an aggregation platform, drawing bibliometric data from various sources such as Crossref, PubMed, Microsoft Academic, and OpenAlex, and integrating them using advanced analytics to provide enriched, contextual information.
History
[edit]The service was initially launched in 2000 as a database of U.S. patents focused on agricultural technologies. Between 2004 and 2007, under the leadership of Dr. Marie Connett and Dr. Richard Jefferson at Cambia, the platform expanded to include patents across all scientific disciplines, engineering fields, and other areas of innovation. This expansion also introduced access to patent applications and granted patents from multiple jurisdictions through a website then known as the Patent Lens. During this period, new tools were developed to enable searching of biological sequences within patent literature, alongside the introduction of dynamically updating patent landscapes tailored to specific fields. These enhancements supported the broader goal of democratizing access to intellectual property data. Over time, the database has enabled free and open access to patent literature and facilitated the production of scholarly materials such as conference papers, reports, and books. The platform’s analytical tools have been continuously refined to uncover trends in patent ownership, citation patterns, and technology landscapes. In 2013, the platform was rebranded as The Lens. It has received funding support from several organizations over the years, including the Rockefeller Foundation (2000–2004), a donation via the International Rice Research Institute (2005–2006), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (2011), the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (2012), the Wellcome Trust (2018), and the Lemelson Foundation.[1][2][3][4] Today, The Lens hosts over 225 million scholarly works, more than 127 million global patent records, and upwards of 370 million biological sequences.[5]
Features
[edit]The Patent Lens Sequence Project, launched in June 2006, is the only publicly accessible resource that allows users to explore more than 80 million DNA and protein sequences disclosed in patents.[6]
Patent tutorials[7] are available on the site covering patent claims, freedom to operate, patent inventorship, and continuing patent applications. Plant breeders' rights (PBR), also known as plant variety rights (PVR), are also addressed. This has the intention to "forge a learning resource that participants in innovation systems at all levels... can use to learn of critical and timely issues relevant to improving the public good... by engaging with the patent system".[8]
The patent search interface is available in Chinese, English and French, with the full text of European Patent Office (EPO) patents being searchable in English, French and German. PCT applications are searchable in Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Spanish.[citation needed]
Response
[edit]The Lens was described in the Journal of the Medical Library Association as the “most comprehensive scholarly literature database, that exceeds in its width and depth two leading commercial databases (Web of Science and Scopus) combined”.[4]
Francis Gurry, director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in March 2009, stated that the landscaping activities of the Patent Lens: in "view of the shared objective of making patent information systems more comprehensive and accessible, and turning raw patent data into useful information resources so as to strengthen the empirical basis of international policy processes".[9]
Nature Biotechnology called the Patent Lens "a giant leap in the right direction" for providing researchers, technology transfer offices and company executives a facile means of establishing the novelty of their offerings and the nature of their competitors' inventions.[10]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ "Which institutions are behind The Lens". about.lens.org.
- ^ "Our History - When Was It Started". about.lens.org.
- ^ "Editorial: Patently transparent". Nature Biotechnology. 24 (5): 474. 2006. doi:10.1038/nbt0506-474a. PMID 16680110.
- ^ a b Penfold, R (2020). "Using The Lens database for staff publications". Journal of the Medical Library Association. 108 (2): 341–344. doi:10.5195/jmla.2020.918. PMC 7069820.
- ^ "What". About The Lens.
- ^ Connett Porceddu, M. B.; Bacon, N.; Ashton, D.; Baillie, B.; dos Remedios, N.; Wei, Y.; Jefferson, R. A. (2007). "Constructive approaches to Intellectual Property Complexity in Today's Agricultural Technology World" (PDF). Plant Molecular Breeding. 5 (2): 294–295. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-11-21. Retrieved 2010-01-04.
- ^ "Patent Tutorials and FAQs". Archived from the original on 2010-03-25. Retrieved 2010-01-04.
- ^ Jefferson, Richard (Fall 2006). "Science as Social Enterprise: The CAMBIA BiOS Initiative". Innovations. 1 (4): 13–44. doi:10.1162/itgg.2006.1.4.13. hdl:2123/2686.
- ^ "Patent Lens Letter of Endorsement from Dr. Francis Gurry, Director General, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-10-24. Retrieved 2010-01-04.
- ^ "Patently Transparent". Nature Biotechnology. 24 (5): 474. 2006. doi:10.1038/nbt0506-474a. PMID 16680110.
