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An intellectual property law firm: patents, trademarks, and copyrights.

Using Nested Searches in a Legal Research Query

The use of nested searches is important when performing searches—when searching government databases or case law.

A nested search is used to isolate which search terms are affected by a logical operator (boolean operator), to give desired search results.

The “nesting” is made with the use of parenthesis. The parenthesis affect the order of how the operators will affect the search terms.

For earlier reading, read basics on parts of an advanced search: Basics of a Free Form Search for Legal Research

Nested Legal Research Queries and Similarities to Math Equations

Nested searches have similar qualities to math equations.

A legal research nested search will use common operators such as: AND, OR, NOT, and proximity operators (ADJ; /#; /s, SAME, etc.).

When comparing to math equations:

AND, NOT, and proximity operators are similar to a times/multiple operator; and
OR is similar to a plus/minus/addition/subtraction operator.

Short Explanation of Search Queries Including Nesting and the Results

Search Query: A AND (B OR C)

Results: This search will return results for two types of documents:

1) documents with A and B within each document; and
2) documents with A and C within each document.

Search Query: A AND (B OR (C AND D))

Results: This search will return two types of documents:

1) documents with A and B within each document; and
2) documents with A, C, and D within each document.

Search Query: (A AND (B OR C)) NOT E

Results: This search will return two types of documents:

1) documents with A and B within each document, and each document will not have E; and
2) documents with A and C within each document, each document will not have E.

Long Explanation of Search Queries Including Nesting and the Results

First Example:

Search Query: A AND (B OR C)

This search will return results for two types of documents:

1) documents with A and B within each document; and
2) documents with A and C within each document.

The (B OR C) is the nested part.

Start with the most nested term and then work your way out, when you’re developing a nested search (or understanding a nested search).

So, look at B OR C. And in the development of this search, you chose this part because you want a search to have B OR C in a document which you’re searching for.

The reasoning for this could be: B might be a synonym of C.

For a non-variable example of the First Example, you are looking for case law which involves a contract or agreement (synonyms). Either word will be fine for describing what you are looking for.

But, the document you want must also have the word of patent because you are looking for case law related to a contract/agreement based on a patent. So you need a document with patent in it.

So setting up a search of “patent AND (contract OR agreement)” as a search makes sense.

You want the documents you view to have:

The words patent and contract within each document, or
the words patent and agreement within each document.

So it’s ok to have documents which are either type of document:

Documents with the words patent and contract within each document, and
documents with the words patent and agreement within each document.

It doesn’t matter if the element you’re looking for related to the patent is called a contract or agreement. You want either, so both should be in the results.

You could have actually phrased this search differently and received the same results. The different phrasing could have been:

(patent AND contract) OR (patent AND agreement)

This new phrasing breaks out how the operator is affecting what is inside the original parenthesis. The “patent AND contract” then “patent AND contract”.

You want to properly order your operators, through the use of parenthesis, because if you don’t, you may make the following mistake.

Not properly ordering operators:

If you searched, “patent AND contract OR agreement” you may get an error, or you might return results which you don’t want because you are not ordering the affect of your operators (depending on the database).

The possible unwanted returns might be:

(1) documents which have the words of patent and contract; and
(2) documents which have the word of agreement.

This will result in a lot of wanted results. The unwanted results will be documents which require agreement in the document but no other requirement (you want the word patent in your results, so you want that as a requirement).

Without parenthesis dictating the affect of the operators, the database may have an order to automatically sequence operators. So unwanted results may occur from the database doing the automatic nesting of (patent AND contract) OR agreement.

Inside the parenthesis is looked at first, so patent AND contract. With the AND inside a parenthesis the search is viewed as a single unit, both patent and contract are together. Then outside the parenthesis is looked at, which is connected by an OR. So the search will return the documents of the first unit of (patent AND contract) or documents with the second unit of agreement.

The major effect of this error will be the large amount of documents in your results with only agreement as a requirement and no other requirement. The error is that you will get documents which don’t necessarily have "patent" in the document, so many documents will be related to agreements for real estate, MA, stock transfers, or any other type of agreement.

Second Example:

Search Query: A AND (B OR (C AND D))

This search will return two types of documents:

1) documents with A and B within each document; and
2) documents with A, C, and D within each document.

To parse this out, you look at the most nested part. So you look at the C AND D part, it is within another set of parenthesis. There are no other parts which are within more parenthesis, so it is the most nested part. The C AND D makes one unit.

Then look at the next most nested part, which is the B part. Then look how the most nested and the next most nested part are connected, which is by an OR. So B is connected by an OR to the unit of C AND D.

Then look at the next most nested part, which is A (not nested at all, and the last part to look at). Then look how the next most nested part, is connected to last analyzed part. So, A is connected by an AND to the last analyzed of part which is documents with B; or documents with C AND D. The connection is an AND, which is similar to a multiply/times function in math, so the A will be connected by an AND to both parts within the parenthesis of the B and (C AND D). B and (C AND D) are two parts because they are connected by an OR. So the result is: 1) documents with A and B in the document; and 2) documents with A, C, and D in the document.

Third Example:

Search Query: (A AND (B OR C)) NOT E

This search will return two types of documents:

1) documents with A and B within each document, and each document will not have E; and
2) documents with A and C within each document, and each document will not have E.

Look at the most nested part, which is (B OR C) and see how it is connected to the next most nested part, which is A with an AND. So that analyzed will be: 1) documents with A and B within the document; and 2) documents with A and C within the document.

Then look at the next most nested part, which is E (not nested at all, and the last part to look at). The E is connected by a NOT operator which is directional, meaning the NOT aspect will affect the element to the right of the operator. Also the NOT operator is like a multiply operator so the element affected by the NOT will affect all the parts (or combined subunits) within the parenthesis. So the first nested element, in subunits of (A AND (B OR C)) will be returned and every result will not include E. So the results will be: 1) documents with A and B in each document, and will not have E; and 2) documents with A and C in each document, and will not have E.

For earlier reading, read about using a NOT boolean operator for an advanced search:

Outside Sources for Learning Nesting

Patents

Nested Quick Expressions Section of the Advance Search Help Section for USPTO Patent Search

Trademarks

Logical Operators Section of the Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) Help page

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