Digest V - September 2016

Introduction

This month I’m pleased to announce that it is now possible to subscribe to the blog.   Sign up directly to receive an email with direct link to the blog page and receive updates as they are published.   Another encouraging sign, is that database vendors and other software providers have started sending me copy for the blog. This is great, and please all note that the aim of the blog is to focus on new products, content improvements, improvements in search tools, and IP management software. The blog also reports on patent information meetings and events attended by companies tracked, as well as news from the IP offices of interest to patent information users.

Patent information - sources, content, search, review and analysis

User interfaces of patent information products are the first step towards search and vendors aim to ease the search process and make choices clear as possible for searchers.

Searching patents is definitely a multi-lingual experience with more than half of new applications published each year in languages other than English. Users can either search machine translations into English of the non-Latin text source documents, but vendors are also offering original language interfaces for search. Patseer has introduced Japanese, Chinese, Korean or Thai search forms.

Patent searching and analysis
Ambercite published a comparison table of cluster search (their proprietary technology) vs. a generic model of traditional search methods and functionality (boolean / proximity). This may be of interest for those who want to understand whether to include citation cluster based analysis in their patent work.  Thomson Innovation has a new ‘Smart search’ feature, which the blog will find out more about for next time.

There has been some activity in the chemical structure search and chemical name indexing to assist search and categorisation of chemistry patents recently. Questel announced the integration of ChemAxon’s chemical searching and indexing capabilities into Intellixir, it’s post-search analysis software. This will permit the identification and search of chemical structures and substructures in both patent and scientific literature..   Patseer has also improved its chemical name look up options to help searchers to find additional synonyms.   STN has also improved structure searching in its version of Derwent Markush Resource (DWPIM), Derwent Chemistry Resource (DCR) and REAXYSFILE_Sub on the new STN platform. The enhancements include extra precision for sub-structure search (CSS), element count, atom lock, ring lock and matching.

Post-search results viewing
This is often the most time consuming part of any analysis – reviewing the returned results for relevance to the question in hand. Gridlogic’s PatSeer has made some improvements for its customers who can now view results in family groups (simple or extended), and for review of individual selected sections of the full text in separate windows. Thomson Innovation introduced a ‘Results Dashboard’ approach in June.

Analysis and visualisation tools
Handling large datasets can be challenging, and Thomson Innovation’s ThemeScape views offer users a text-based approach to categorising a set of documents. However preparing ThemeScape maps can be challenging, and the charts can be difficult to interpret, in recognition of this TI have introduced a semi-automated approach to preparing.

Portfolio monitoring and competitive intelligence
Software for Intellectual Property GmbH (SIP) has provided IP management software since 1999, and now it also offers monitoring tools to enable the tracking of third party patents and other IP rights, based on DOCDB data.

Database content
Patent documents are published and often referred to using publication numbers. These numbers are actually made up of three parts, the country code, the publication number itself and the kind code.   The kind code represents the type of publication, e.g. application, grant, correction of either and may have a letter (usually A or B) as well as sometimes, a number (1 or 2) representing loosely the number of times the document has been published. These kind codes are maintained and organised by WIPO. STN announced this month that the EPO’s INPADOC database, which it hosts, has recently introduced a change to the kind code for patent publications from South Africa (ZA). The patent law of South Africa allows for a single publication (of the granted document), so the kind codes are being changed from A to B to reflect this.   Publication years 1971 to 1996 and 2015 are affected. All newly published INPADOC records will have the kind code ZA B.

Academic literature – dissertations
ProQuest® Dissertations & Theses Global (PQDT) database has been licensed to fifty universities in Russia. This interesting database contains approximately four million post-graduate theses which are indexed for search using assigned subject terms and keywords. PQDT Global has a Russian interface and translated abstracts. As well as being invaluable for basic research, in science and humanities, dissertations can be a fruitful source of NPL for invalidity searching.

IP and innovation management tools
MaxVal this month announced a new product called SymphonyIAM; a platform which includes invention and portfolio management, including managing annuity payments.

From the IP offices.

Asia
China, Mongolia and Russia have signed an agreement to cooperate in seven areas to build a trilateral economic corridor, The three countries aim to improve transport facilities, renovate ports and overhaul customs procedures for easier clearance, as well as closer cooperation in energy and mineral resources, high tech, manufacturing, agriculture and forestry, and intellectual property matters.   IP statistics from Japan. Latest figures from the JPO Statistical Database can be downloaded from the JPO website. Data includes no. patents filed, utility model applications filed, design and trademark applications, the number of registrations, the number of trials and appeals, the number of international applications for patents, trademarks and designs, and the number of requests for examination. Stats are updated monthly.   JPO has updated examination guidelines, and added case examples on how it proceeds with ‘Internet of Things ‘patent examinations. Legal IP enforcement in China. Protection of intellectual property rights in China is carried out by three special courts - in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. IT infrastructure in the courts is being improved to facilitate dissemination of the decisions to third parties.    SIPO, is also striving to improve the quality of patent enforcement with the Patent Administrative Enforcement (Trial) management system.

Europe
The European Patent Office (EPO) and the Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO) held a joint workshop to exchange information on plant-related patents and plant variety rights.   The two organisations are sharing knowledge, expertise and working practices, which includes databases and other working tools. This workshop stemmed from an agreement on closer cooperation established earlier this year. The Netherlands has ratified the Unitary Patent Court Agreement, making it the 10th country to do so. The Unitary patent system can only enter into force when thirteen countries have ratified, and these must include France, Germany and the UK. France has ratified, Germany is progressing towards ratification, but the UK position remains unclear due to Brexit. A new user group (EuroIPG) of Japanese IP professionals in Europe met with JPO officials in Dusseldorf in September.

USA
This month the America Invents Act (AIA) turned five, and New Mexico state got it’s first Patent and Trademark Resource Center (PTRC).   The modern PTRC network began in 1871 when federal law allowed for the distribution of printed patents to libraries for public use. There are now 85 centres in the PTRC network.   The AIA brought about new post grant proceedings in the USA including the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), giving patent search a more prominent position in the US examination and prosecution process.

Commercial information vendor news

EBSCO has redesigned its customer support site, which was introduced ten years ago in 2006. Now called EBSCO Help, the site has a simple browse architecture, with product-specific pages, topic-specific pages, and a search engine for those customer to use who still don’t see what they’re looking for. The sale of TR’s Intellectual Property & Science (IP&S) business is now finalised. A new company, Clarivate Analytics, has been formed, which will operate all of the well know search and information management software and databases from CortellisTM to Thomson InnovationTM, Vin Caraher is the CEO of Clarivate Analytics. Onex Corporation and Baring Private Equity Asia are the ultimate owners, and they paid $3.55 billion in cash for the business.

Patent information meetings

The 7th Patent Information Annual Conference of China (PIAC) took place this month in Beijing, the event is hosted by Intellectual Property Publishing House Co., Ltd. Over 4,000 delegates attended the meeting emanating from IP offices, industrial companies and commercial vendors from around the world. Some also represented user groups such as PIUG, and PDG. The annual Cipher User Conference will take place in London on 20 October., and PatentSight attended the PIUG NE conference. Linguamatics are planning their bi-annual Text Mining Summit , the autumn event takes place in Chatham , MA, USA in October, the summit will present practical approaches to text mining and knowledge discovery and naturally present latest developments to I2E.   Also in October Questel is hosting a day dedicated to “Intellectual Property & data analysis challenges in life sciences and chemistry” with industry and vendor speakers.