Language processing systems e.g. computer or machine assisted translation systems, and intelligent natural and pictorial language processing.

Expert systems including knowledge base details, and fuzzy logic systems. Systems for processing knowledge e.g. using machine generated rules, or duplicating natural laws e.g. inheritance and evolution. Machine learning e.g. using specific methods to adjust the rules i.e. connection weights.

Artificial neural network configurations including the use of parallel distributed processing elements constructed in hardware or simulated in software. Genetic algorithms and intelligent searching arrangements.
ISSN 1463-7383

Computer systems configured to perform specific functions e.g. mathematical applications; evaluating statistical data, equation solving, correlation or transformation function computing, matrix or vector computing.

Computer systems used in medicine e.g. medical information systems. Data collection systems for e.g. measurements using e.g. portable data input devices. Control of industrial processes and factory automation including computer control of manufacturing machines and quality control.

See Derwent ITP ‘Computer control systems’ for aspects of control systems in general.
ISSN 1463-7324

Arrangements for transferring data to be processed into a form which is capable of being handled and output by the computer, e.g. buffering arrangements for reading and writing data to and from disc storage devices. Small Computer System Interface.

Interfacing and code translation arrangements for manual input devices e.g. keyboard, mouse, joystick, virtual keyboards and touch screens, tracker ball, pen input, hand input etc.

Data communications interfacing e.g. telephone interfaces and modems, and arrangements for interfacing with computer networks. Output to displays e.g. CRTs and display panels. See also Derwent ITP ‘Electronic Displays and Display Applications’ Derwent ITP for details of display hardware.

Output to printers and plotters including networked and shared printers. See also Derwent ITP ‘Hardcopy Image Reproduction and Line Printers’ for details of printers.

Asynchronous and synchronous operation e.g. USART, and interfaces characterised by communication mode. Smart card reader interface, and buffer structures e.g. shift registers, recirculating and buffer/interface function e.g. rate control. Serial ports, parallel ports and serial-parallel conversion. Interface buses and point-to-point connection.

Digital input and output using sampling of analogue signals e.g. digital to analogue conversion, and speech recognition and synthesis for input and output. PCMCIA cards.
ISSN 1463-7286

Includes details of the construction of computers and computer peripheral equipment. Computer and portable computer casing and construction details. Peripheral installations in computer housings e.g. internal drives, trackballs etc.

Cooling and ventilating arrangements, mounting of PCBs in computer housings and EM shielding etc. Power supplies and power stand-by arrangements for computers.

Furniture aspects of the ‘electronic office’ e.g. desks and chairs, and computer ancillary equipment e.g. screen filters, mouse mats etc. See Derwent ITP ‘Electrical equipment constructions’ for details of e.g. casings, cabinets, housing and screening arrangements for electrical equipment in general.
ISSN 1463-7405

Error monitoring, detection and correction equipment for computer hardware. Includes methods and systems which are used to detect and correct errors in computer data and hardware, and monitor computer systems in general. Detecting errors in data using redundancy in data representation, e.g. using checking codes or parity. Defective hardware location test systems, i.e. Automatic Test Equipment, Computer Aided Testing, and built in testing e.g. scanpath, signature and boundary analysis. Testing data by comparing computer operations to verify accuracy of data. Test programs and algorithms, and software for generating test patterns and/or collecting results and analysing faults. Software for controlling test procedures and test apparatus. See 'Computer software' Derwent ITP for software development e.g. software testing, verification and debug details.

Fail-safe and monitoring systems for error recovery and monitoring during processor system operation. Fault-tolerant systems. Watchdog monitoring, and ensuring correct program flow. Halting operation of processing upon detection of error. Using redundant or additional processors. Recording and evaluation systems used to monitor computer hardware operations, log events and report failures. Computer logic simulation. Fault simulation by e.g. introduction of known faults and stuck-at-one, stuck-at-zero techniques etc. See also the Derwent ITP ‘Computer aided design’ for details of electrical and electronic circuit design and simulation.

Measurements of non-processing parameters of computer systems e.g. smoke or fire detection. User monitoring e.g. period of continuous use, harmful screen emissions etc.
ISSN 1463-726X

Includes hardware details of computer peripherals specifically designed to enable the input and output of data to and from the computer e.g. keyboards, joysticks, mouse, scanning arrangements, using digitally marked record carriers e.g. bar codes and digitally marked cards, bar code readers etc.

See also Derwent ITPs: ‘Hardcopy Image Reproduction and Line Printers’ for details of printers in general, and ‘Electronic Displays and Display Applications’ for details of visual display units in general.
ISSN 1463-7278

Systems software: Firmware microprogramming and addressing of micro-instructions. Multi-tasking; multiple task sequencing and task selection, interrupt handling and processing. Task interaction; multiprocessor transaction management, and allocation of resources to processes, load balancing and scheduling.

Execution of machine instructions; instruction addressing, branching, access of instruction operand and decoding instructions for execution. Concurrent instruction execution, instruction pipelining. Sub-program and sub-routine execution.

Computer system management software; operating systems, supervisors, executives and monitors. Computer language processors i.e. compilers and assemblers. Booting/initialisation and recovery arrangements including resetting and system configuration, e.g. booting up and program loading including version management. Sleeping and waking, system powering-up and power-down.

Data handling programs and storage management including allocation/deallocation strategies, distributed memories, segmentation and storage hierarchies.

Virtual systems including shells and interfaces created by the operating system and emulation of terminal types by system software. Object based systems.

Software development: Programming techniques e.g. concurrent, sequential, functional, automatic or computer generated. Programming languages and methodologies, tools for systems analysis and specification languages. Software libraries, software registration and anti-piracy. Program verification, testing and debug. Software simulation. Computer system virus protection.

Patents having a software content including documents containing program listings written in i.e. binary, assembler, firmware or high-level languages. Documents containing algorithms or pseudo-code. Claimed software products e.g. products based on software and stored on i.e. CD-ROM. Application software details are included in the relevant Derwent ITPs e.g. ‘Computer aided design’ and the ‘Computer applications’ Derwent ITPs where appropriate.
ISSN 1463-7294

Covers circuits and techniques for manipulating data for processing and storage within a computing environment.

Computer memory systems, architectures and memory allocation and addressing details. Memory storage components and hardware. Memory protection e.g. prevention of memory loss, DRAM refresh, prevention of illegal memory access. Memory types e.g. virtual memory, cache memory, hierarchical memory, associative memory, sequential access and shared memory.

Program control for computer peripherals. Handling requests for interconnection or data transfer and controlling access to e.g. memory bus, input/output bus, common bus and local bus systems e.g. PCI, VL-bus. Covers polling, interrupt, DMA, cycle steal, bus arbitration and contention schemes. Bus structures e.g. multiple and variable width buses and centralised and decentralised control arrangements.

Microprocessor and microcontroller architectures e.g. parallel/array, pipeline/vector, data/demand driven and Reduced Instruction Set Computer architectures.

Computer system types e.g. portable, laptop, notebook, palm-tops, hand-held and calculators. Also mainframe and supercomputer systems.

Computer data handling e.g. data conversion, encryption and encoding. Sorting, selecting and comparing data. Arithmetic manipulation e.g. adding, subtracting, logarithmic computation, integration and differentiation etc.

Details of specific memory devices per se., e.g. semiconductor memory are included in the Derwent ITP 'Electronic Data Storage Systems'. See also 'Distributed Computing' Derwent ITP for computer network details.
ISSN 1463-7308

Computing systems using separate computers connected through a communications network for e.g. executing processing tasks, accessing shared data or files and for data and information communications.

Computer network architecture and Internetworking arrangements, e.g. Internet, Intranets, WANs and LANs. Network-only computers designed to operate using software accessed via a network e.g. the Internet. Client-server systems.

Information transfer across computer networks, e.g. electronic mail, audio and sound transfer, computerised video and image file transfer (including computerised video conferencing), multimedia transfer and electronic document transfer (including Intranet and Internet documentation and web page transfer). Executing software from a remote site or server.

Distributed and networked computer communication arrangements including computer network control, monitoring and management, data transfer over private network (e.g. Intranet transfer), and public networks (e.g. Internet transfer). Computer communication protocols.

Local inter-processor data transfer and inter-processor communications in multiprocessor systems, and multiprocessor memory management schemes.

Computer network hardware e.g. network interfacing (LAN and WAN interfacing) and computer peripheral network connections.

See also the ITP ‘Data Transmission Networks’ for details of data exchanges and networks e.g. LAN, WAN, ISDN, etc., and data transmission aspects of the Internet in general.
ISSN 1463-7251

Computing systems for administration and management applications in e.g. business, education, government, marketing and law. Stock control, workflow control and project management systems for industrial applications. Decision support systems.

Computer systems used in the financial and commercial sectors e.g. banking, automatic billing, point-of-sale, automatic teller machines, electronic funds transfer and financial services applications in general.

Includes all aspects of dynamic data storage systems e.g. disc drives for computer data storage, and semiconductor memory device details characterised by technology, e.g. bipolar, FETs, and optical elements, and by device type e.g. RAM, EEPROM etc.

Includes shift (serial access) storage devices e.g. magnetic devices and non-volatile bubble memories. Details of data reading/writing (I/O) control circuits, data programming and erasing circuits and clocking circuits.

Memory addressing, access and allocation arrangements, e.g. for data and instructions stored in computer memory. Memory built-in self test schemes e.g. for detecting defective memory elements and replacing with redundant elements.

Dynamic recording systems for image and audio data are covered under separate Derwent ITPs e.g. 'Components and systems for dynamic recording', and ‘Components and Systems for Dynamic AV recording’ for details specific to audio and video recording and reproduction equipment.
ISSN 1463-7928

Electronic document preparation including word-processing, spreadsheets and desk top publishing, spell checking and grammar-checking.

Electronic and intranet documentation, e.g. using mark-up languages and navigating documents using hypertext. Page description languages i.e. HTML, SGML. Help documentation. Electronic document delivery systems.

Program management applications e.g. interactive operator interface windows applications and security. User prompting and graphical user interfaces e.g. menu driven systems in which options are presented for selection by the user, and user interface management systems. Use of user selectable graphical objects e.g. icons, displayed as a symbolic reference for processes or files.

Computer security arrangements for preventing unauthorised access to files and processing systems e.g. anti-hacking and copy protection. Electronic security systems for computers in general.
ISSN 1463-7375

Computer systems for the organisation and retrieval of information and data stored in e.g. databases. Content analysis and indexing using e.g. linguistic processing and thesauri. Search and retrieval tools and schemes, e.g. algorithms for searching large databases and query formulation.

Systems for analysis of retrieved information e.g. statistical and graphical result presentation. Information systems and networks for selected applications e.g. geographical and medical. Distributed, relational, object-oriented and deductive databases and database management systems. Image and video databases. Database applications e.g. database software applications and systems using databases.
ISSN 1463-7359