Digest IV - August 2016

Introduction

The fourth edition of the digest contains selected news from commercial information and service providers, and IP offices such as IP5 and WIPO. Naturally the focus is on patent information, also I include other news items which I find interesting. These range from new search or analysis technologies, to new content, and software for data delivery. Maybe introduced in areas outside of IP information, but with potential to add value to the IP information world. For instance, in August ProQuest and Reuters introduced solutions for filtering video, photo and multimedia streaming content. I have a long standing interest in the retrieval of image data from searching in the devices and mechanical patent fields, where only by reviewing the drawings can the invention be fully understood. Technologies to search and review film, YouTube clips and other visual content, may one day be picked up by patent, and trademark information vendors.. What else is new?

Focus on patent information - content, search, review and analysis

Content – Google patents now contains full text, fully searchable, machine translated patent applications and granted documents from several European countries – namely Germany, UK, France, Spain, Russia, Netherlands, Finland, Denmark, Luxembourg and Belgium. Google has also added new options for refining the search, and filtering results.

Product news : Patent searching and analysis all in one platform was announced by Gridlogics with PatSeer Pro. PatSeer Pro combines Gridlogics’ two products into a Web 2.0 version, making it easier to search, clean the data, visualise and analyse data without having to download and install special software to your laptop, or upload the selected data set to another product for analysis.

Patent legal status – is that patent in force?

Another product enhancement for Patbase. Minesoft is busy improving legal status search and review on Patbase. Minesoft uses direct feeds from national registers, and has recently added 25 new ones including Austria, Chile, Mexico, Netherlands, Philippines, Portugal, Singapore and Vietnam to enhance the INPADOC data, which is updated every Thursday. Legal status search of litigation information from the US is now live; with search for plaintiff, defendant, date, court. Also useful when reviewing results from a search - an indicator shows which patents have US litigation information. This could be interesting in itself, as patents which are attacked in court are usually ‘important’ in their market.

Patent classification codes are developed by the patent offices for categorising patent applications for examination purposes. These codes are also valuable for search purposes. Japan has two national classification schemes, FI and F term.. For technologies where Japanese companies are globally important, such as displays, medical devices, printing, and consumer electronics the Japan Patent Office (JPO) FI codes should be consulted. They provide more detailed definition of concepts for search than is possible with IPC, and in some cases CPC. FI classifications are updated twice a year. Information on changes, and reclassifications can be found on the JPO website.  

Scientific information and discovery tools

CAS, (Chemical Abstract Service) is currently testing a new version of SciFinder - SciFindern - , which should be on the market in Q2 2017.   SciFindern continues to link ‘human curation’ with powerful ICT capabilities to improve search and filtering, it was announced at the ACS National Meeting. The InfoBlog will seek out more detail for next time……

Scientific literature, analytics and research in Asia
EBSCO puts analytics, big data and altmetrics to work in China with the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC). Plum™ Analytics, will be utilised by the ISTIC-EBSCO Joint Laboratory for Big Data Research and Discovery. Plum Analytics is owned by EBSCO. At the ISTIC academic publications will be monitored and quantified, creating altmetrics at an early stage for the institute. These measures should enable ITSIC to gauge outside interest in its research .   Changes are also taking place in China to allow financial rewards from academic research to be retained by the institutes, and inventors, as reported by SIPO.

Humanities research data news
ProQuest has begun distributing the Visual History Archive from the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education. The Archive includes testimonies from survivors of genocides. Video footage is accompanied by 62,000 manually indexed search terms, allowing researchers to filter search results down to a per minute section of the video.

From the IP offices: news on documentation, legislation and more

WIPO / PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty)
Kuwait and Djibouti recently joined the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). The PCT, which publishes patent applications bearing the (WO) country code, and is administered by World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), allows a single patent application to proceed to prosecution in any of the 150 member countries, and buys the applicant extra time to build the innovation prior to costly translations and examination fees become payable.  

In Asia SIPO (China) is reducing patent fees from September for SMEs and individuals in a new policy, which will reduce the first 6 years of renewal fees and some filing costs.
On trademarks - Chinese trademark registrations reached 11.2 million in June 2016, and over 1.74 million trademark applications were filed in the first half of 2016. Since 2002, the Chinese trademark registration application has ranked first in the world for 14 consecutive years.

In Europe The Swiss IP Office (Institut Fédéral de la Propriété Intellectuelle)  announced a consultation on the Draft of the “Swiss Made” Ordinance for Cosmetics. Organisations should send comments by 30th September.  Innovation in Europe: The GII 2016 report shows Switzerland is the most innovative country, followed by Sweden, and the UK.

Legal information and delivery of services Research news

Thomson Reuters announced a new collaboration with the Legal Design Lab at Stanford Law School with a one-year fellowship for the Legal Design Lab’s innovative work developing novel approaches aimed at improving the delivery of legal services. In particular by finding new approaches for dispute resolution such as online and exploring other alternatives, ideally new make dispute resolution mechanisms should be more efficient, but also improve access to justice. Another goal should be to make the outcomes transparent to third parties, who may have an interest in the outcome. This is currently not always easy, and may often not be available in a timely fashion.

Commercial information; data and technologies

Mobile delivery of data is increasingly important, and the challenges of delivering the data in ‘edible’ chunks suitable for smart phones and tablets are being addressed. Reuters has partnered with ONEm Communications for its interactive SMS technology.  Mobile Operators can use the new technology to provide search, filter and display options for Reuters news content. This technology will help Reuters to reach the estimated 3 billion people who rely on mobile devices for their news coverage. The service is multilingual.

Visualisation of news

Reuters also formed two new partnerships around news visualisation. The first with semantic technology company Graphiq. Graphiq enables data visualizations which will be made available to Reuters customers and within news coverage on Reuters.com. Of most interest to InfoBlog readers, Graphiq provides visual feeds on company news, and health, and sports. And the second with Samsung. Reuters, and Samsung have partnered to produce Focus 360. Focus 360 visualises the world’s news using 360 degree video and photography content and Samsung Gear 360 cameras and editing technology.

Publisher and IP service provider company news.

Services, Sales

AWA Patent is expanding, and looking to recruit new innovation consultants, indicating strategic growth of its commercialisation related IP business. The new unit will be led by John Karlström, Head of Sales at Awapatent.

Client/ User Meetings and other Events

Aistemos is hosting a series of webinar on Cost Management and Patent Strategy, the third webinar is planned for September 21st, and Aistemos also has its user conference planned on October 20th. STN are holding their UK user day on September 14th in London.
Patent search services are offered by ip-search, the search organisation of the Swiss patent office , for the first time they have a user conference in the USA in San Francisco on 12 October 2016.

PatentSight GmbH will be at the ICIC meeting in Heidelberg, Germany in October, as will the author!

ip-search is inviting IP professionals from the USA to a customer event at the de Young Museum in San Francisco under the motto “Boost your innovation services with Swiss premium patent searches”.