Infomart Product EvalationInfomart Product Evalation
The purpose of this product evaluation to examine the resourcesoffered by Infomart that would be of interest to the intellectualproperty professional, academic, student, or layman. While Infomarthas extensive databases beyond those discussed in this review, thisevaluation only attempts to examine those databases relating tointellectual property.
Infomart is an online database offered by Southam ElectronicPublishing of Ontario, Canada in a joint venture with DialogInformation Services (Knight Ridder). Access to Infomart is gainedthrough Telnet connection or a number of dialup connections such asDatapac and others.
Infomart is designed as a source of information on Canadianbusiness consisting of approximately 100 databases mostly focusing onCandadian news sources. The joint venture between Southam ElectronicPublishing and Knight Ridder appears aimed at marketing Infomart as aCanadian business extension to the Dialog information service. Inother words, Infomart is a Canadian focused supplement to Dialog.
In addition to the extensive collection of databases available onDialog, Infomart offers the following:
| Database | Code Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| CPR | 1977-date, Full text of copyright, patent, trademark, industrial design and Competition Act matters. | |
| CCCN | Summary information on over 3 million federal and provincial incorporations and business names. | |
| TCDN | Information on approximately 300,000 registered and pending trademarks. | |
| TOPP | Complete test of decisions of the Trade Marks Opposition Board since January 1989. | |
| TUSA | All active registered and pending trade marks on file in the U.S. P.T.O. |
For the Blue Sheets with full coverage of this database check theInfomart Blue SheetCPR.
(The infomart blue sheet on this database is currently unavailabledue to updating.)
This database has the full text and headnotes of decisions oncopyright, patent, trademark, industrial design and Competition Actcases.
More information will be posted as available.
For the Blue Sheets with full coverage of this database check theInfomart Blue SheetCCCN.
The Canadian Corporate Names database has information on over3,000,000 federal and provincial incoroporations and business names.The database contains the company name, jurisdiction of registration,date of incorporation, status of the corporation and the type ofcompany.
One can search the entire database or just a particular field ofthe database. For instance, a search could be conducted in just thename field or the entire record.
While the federal information is updated weekly, the provincialinformation is closed, so there are no updates to these records.
This database would be very usefull for common law searching oftrade marks within Canada. This database would be usefull for notonly the Canadian business person, but also any foreign corporationthat might aspire to enter the Canadian market.
For the Blue Sheets with full coverage of this database check theInfomart Blue SheetTCDN.
The Canadian Trade Marks database contains information on over300,000 registered and pending Trade Marks. Here is a list of some ofthe fields of the database:
Graphics of trademark images are not available, although thesubfield Description does describe the appearance of the mark.
One can search the full database or a number of these fields. Allof the trademark field's subfields are searchable. The searchingfeature is very much like dialog in that you can build your searchthrough combinations of subsearches. The fields of most interest tosomeone performing a trademark search would be the following:
There are some unique and interesting searching features availablein this database.
The Sound command can be used to search the WordMark subfield tofind words that sound similar to the entered word. The Sound commandperforms a phonetic search of the entire Word Mark field looking forequivalent sounding words. The computer will then display a list ofpossible words, enabling the user to choose which words she wouldlike to search.
This database would be very usefull for searching of federallyregistered trade marks within Canada. This database would be usefullfor not only the Canadian business person, but also any foreigncorporation that might aspire to enter the Canadian market.
For the Blue Sheets with full coverage of this database check theInfomart Blue SheetTOPP.
This database covers the complete text of the decisions of theTrade Marks Opposition Board since January of 1989. The databaseproducer is Consumer and Corporate Affairs of Canada.
This database is updated monthly.
The field in the databas include:
One can search the entire database or just a particular field.
For the Blue Sheets with full coverage of this database check theInfomart Blue SheetTUSA.
This database has all active registered and pending trade marks onfile in the USPTO. Graphics of the trademark images are not availablethrough this database, although graphic descriptions are included.
One can search the full database or a number of these fields. Allof the trademark field's subfields are searchable. The searchingfeature is very much like Dialog in that you can build your searchthrough combinations of subsearches. The fields of most interest tosomeone performing a trademark search would be the following:
There are some unique and interesting searching features availablein this database.
The Sound command can be used to search the WordMark subfield tofind words that sound similar to the entered word. The Sound commandperforms a phonetic search of the entire Word Mark field looking forequivalent sounding words. The computer will then display a list ofpossible words, enabling the user to choose which words she wouldlike to search.
In addition, the Pseudomark field should be searched because itallows you to search for alternate spellings that you might miss withmerely a search composed of your own alternate spellings.
Anyone who has used Dialog will find searching on Infomart veryfamiliar. The basic command for searching a database is 's'. Thedisplay command is 'd'. To set your database, you merely type in theacronym of the database you wish to search, e.g. tusa for USTrademarks.
Infomart allos for the use of a truncation mark, '!'. Infomartsupports adjacency and nearness commands.
One can also combine multiple search statement.
Infomart is not the only source for this intellectual propertyinformation.
| Area of Interest | Infomart | Dialog | Lexis/Nexis |
| Canadian Trademarks | TCDN - supplied by CCA with addition of the Sound search feature. | Trademarkscan - Canada - supplied by CCA of Canada with updates by Thomson and Thomson including the rotated trademark field | None |
| Canadian Patent Cases | CPR - patents, copyrights and trademark cases. | None | CPR - same as Infomart |
| Canadian Corporate Names | CCCN - over 3,000,000 corporate names | Canadian Business Directory with over 1.1 million corporate names | ABICAN-ABI Canada Business Directory CNCORP-CANCORP Plus |
| Canada Trademarks Opposition Board | TOPP - coverage from 1982 | None | None |
| US Trademarks | TUSA - current registered trademarks | Trademarkscan - Federal updated with the rotated trademark field by Thomson and Thomson | None |
WhileQuestel -Orbit does offer U.S., European, and Asian coverae, they offervery little in the way of Canadian coverage.
This page last updated on July 19, 1996.
All opinions and analysis on this page are the views of the authorand are not necessarily endorsed or shared by Franklin Pierce LawCenter.
Any comments should be directed todweinstein@dougperforma.mv.com
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