Introduction

There are several different types of digests in patentdigests.com. Here is a list with a brief explanation of each type:

Document Piles ( docpiles )

These are the work-horses of the site. Docpiles can be produced manually by a user or automatically by different software modules in the system.

Digest Collections

The only organizing principle for your docpiles is the time-of-most-recent-update. You cannot organize docpiles into any type of system or hierarchy. To use or create a systematic hierarchy of digests, you need Digest Collections. Let's first discuss the individual types of digests used to make a collection and then discuss the general structure of a digest collection based on these different types.

d-type digests

These are the "detailed" digests. These d-type digests contain a set of documents that have been manually entered (tagged) into them.

b-type digests

These are the "broad" digests. The document content of a b-type digest is automatically determined by the documents of all the digests indented under it; this includes all the other b-type, d-type, h-type, and s-type digests that are indented below the given b-type. Each individual b-type digest constitutes its own page in a digest collection. Note that the first page in a digest collection is "page 0" and does not have a b-type digest associated with it, but all other pages in the collection are created from a b-type digest and list the digests indented under that digest.

h-type digests

These are the "holding" digests. The holding digests are the most algorithmically active digests of the site and are unique to the "Dynamic Indexing" approach used here.

Here are the rules that govern the behavior of h-type digests. These rules are executed automatically by the system and there is no human intervention. They are presented here only to satisfy curious minds.

• Every b-type digest has an associated h-type digest. When a b-type digest is created, its h-type digest is also automatically created.

• A document can be tagged (entered) into either an h-type digest or the b-type digest associated therewith. If this document is not in any of the other digests indented under the b-type digest (i.e., it is not in the b-digest), it will be tagged (entered) into the h-type digest and into the associated b-type digest; otherwise, it will not be entered into the h-type digest and will stay in the b-type digest.

• If a document is currently in an h-type digest, but that document is subsequently entered (tagged) into another digest indented under the b-type digest associated with that h-type digest, the document will be entered into that other digest and will be automatically removed from the h-type digest. It stays in the associated b-type digest.

This is a situation where the explanation sounds more complicated than the reality. The h-type digests are "holding" digests that hold a document until that document is placed into another digest indented under the associated b-type digest.

The h-type digests allow for much more efficient tagging of our patent documents. It's easy to recognize broad areas where a document belongs, but much more challenging to drill down to the detailed concepts involved with the d-type digests. The h-type digests allow a document to be "held" in a broad digest awaiting future consideration to place it in a more detailed location.

s-type digests

These are the cpc "subgroup" digests or "special" digests.

n-type digests

These are the "null" digests and do not contain any documents. They have a title and notes and are used to provide document-free information or simple formatting on a browser page with other digests.

Community digests

A Community Digest Collection is a public digest collection.

User digests

A User Digest Collection is a private digest collection, only available to the user who creates it.

CPC digests

The Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) system is used internationally. This website has its own cpc database containing the classifications of all US patents and US pre-grant publications (pgpubs).