It should be noted that "special characters" (i.e. characters beyond the standard 26 letter Roman alphabet, numerals 0 to 9 and the following characters: & (ampersand), °(degree) and % (percentage)) in names and titles are replaced by standard characters when transcribed into the database. Only standard characters will appear in the bibliographic data presented in the Canadian Patent Database. Please see the "Practice Notice on Special Characters" for more information.
From the search results screen, you can view patent details (abstract and claims) by clicking on the patent number. Occasionally, the patent abstracts and claims will have embedded diagrams or formulas that cannot be converted to text; these images will not appear in the patent detail text screens, but you will see the following icon:
You can see these non-textual components by requesting the patent document images.
Similarly you can also download the images of a patent in Adobe Acrobat ® PDF format by clicking on the "PDF" link. The primary purpose of this facility is to provide a quality print capability.