Digest XII - October 2017

This month the Blog report on new content announcements, new functionality for search and analytics tools, news from the patent offices and a brief roundup of the EPO PIC in Sofia, which as well as the plenary presentation and workshops always has a great exhibition area with many new and established participants from the patent information industry. This year I also met some blog readers which was great, glad you are finding the Blog useful! This month deepSearch 9 collected over 110 stories from 69 companies for the Blog. This month’s highlights are news of the next EPO President, a new pharmaceutical patent information resource, dissertations searchable in google scholar.

 

News from the Offices
The next president of the European Patent Office (EPO) was announced in October as Antonio Campinos. A Portuguese national, Mr Campinos will begin his new role on July 1st, 2018. Significantly, he brings experience of running both patent and trademark offices - he is currently Executive Director of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), and he has previously served as President of the Portuguese Institute of Industrial Property (INPI).   The President of the EPO is elected by the Administrative Council. The Administrative Council is responsible for supervising the activities of the EPO (Office), approving the budget and appointing the President of the EPO.

 

The Japan Patent Office (JPO) published its 2016 statistics , interesting to see who the top 10 patent applicants for patent registrations in 2016 were. Namely - Panasonic Corporation, Canon Inc., Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Toyota Motor Corporation, Fujitsu Limited, Denso Corporation ,Seiko Epson Corporation, Honda Motor Co., Ltd., Ricoh Company, Ltd., Jfe Steel Corporation. There are lots more charts available for those interested in tracking Japanese technologies, and patenting.

 

Patent Office Agreements
A validation agreement between EPO and Tunisia was signed and will enter into force on 01/12/17. The EPO also entered into two new ‘Patent Prosecution Highway’ agreements his month with Brazil and with the Eurasian Patent Office (EAPO). SIPO (China) and MIH (Cambodia) dignitaries signed a Memorandum of Understanding whereby Chinese patents are automatically validated in Cambodia, in return SIPO will provide search and examination assistance to the Cambodia Ministry of Industry and Handicrafts.

 

Trademarks at EUIPO
Some new rules for trademark filing came into effect on October 1st at EUIPO (the European Union Intellectual Property Office).   One change abolished the ‘graphical representation’ requirement for t ‘signs’ . Signs can now be presented in in any way, so long as the representation is clear. The EUIPO will be providing guidelines on what formats are acceptable. A new type of trademark is now available -   certification marks.   They can be used by certifying institutions to indicate that the awarding body has met the certification requirements.

 

Patent offices at meetings and trainings
Sino-German Patent System Meeting was held in Beijing. At the meeting the revision of the Guidelines for Patent Examination in China and patent examination under the German Industry 4.0 framework were reviewed.  The Japan Patent Office (JPO) ran a training course on patent examination practice in Thailand . SIPO delegates attended the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (AIPPI), and at the request of the organisers led a Special Session on China’s intellectual property system development. The AIPPI held its 120th anniversary event in Sydney, Australia.

 

Patent information
WIPO signed an agreement with International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA), to create a database called Patent Information Initiative for Medicines, or “Pat-INFORMED” which will be hosted by WIPO. Twenty pharmaceutical companies have agreed to provide information for the service. Pat-INFORMED will link published patent information, including legal status information to registered medicines to make it clearer what is protected by patents and what is not in the business of pharmaceuticals. Although this data is already available, for example in the US through the Orange Book, it is not available worldwide. This is what Pat-INFORMED hope to achieve. The database should be available mid-2018 with patent information relating to WHO Essential Medicines List.

 

Patent search and analysis
The EPO recently made some changes to the way it processes US fee payment legal status event codes, and STN have already implemented the new codes into the INPADOC database. From week 2017/43 (23rd October ) onwards the new codes will be in use bringing more specific information which will enable searchers to have a better idea whether the patent is ‘dead’ or ‘alive’ or likely to go either way in the near future. The changes mean that there will be more INPADOC legal events for US fee payment data (11 million to 15 million records). The year of fee payment information is also included.  The new codes cover the following USPTO events: Fee Payment Procedures, Filing Fee Payment, Maintenance Fee Payment, Reinstatement After Maintenance Fee Payment Confirmed, And Lapse For Failure To Pay Maintenance Fee, And Refunds.
Gridlogics announced new features to PatSeer which will enhance search and analytic capabilities. There are now fields for Parent Corporate Owner, and industry mapping, and Mathematical Expressions and numbers can be searched more easily and the introduction of a Claims Analyzer.

 

Citation search and analysis
Ambercite just realised search engine 4.0 with the new AI approach, and also an enhanced display with drawings and abstracts for faster review of retrieved documents.    PATSEER now enables search of Forward Cited Examiner Rejections and Examiner citations separately.

 

Healthcare citations and text mining
EBSCO Health introduced ‘Dynamic Health’ , a resource of evidence-based content aimed at nurses and other front line health professionals which can now be searched on EBSCO Health.   The file will be integrated within EBSCO’s HealthStream Learning Center and HealthStream Checklist Management .  

 

 

Non Patent Literature

 

Academic, legal and historical, research information
EBSCO are now making available through EBSCOhost and EBSCO Discovery Service five HeinOnline databases.   The HeinOnline databases contain legal historical and US governmental documents.   The databases include the HeinOnline Legal Classics, and Federal Register (from 1936 ), which are available now and the Code of Federal Regulations, US Congressional Documents (from 1980 ), HeinOnline US Congressional Documents which will be available soon.   The Code of Federal Regulations XML Files are available as bulk download through the US GPO and partners open data initiatives.   The ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global database (PQDT) can now be searched through Google Scholar.   Those searching in an authenticated library gain access to the full text according to their subscription, some dissertations are open access. Dissertations are a useful source for emerging technologies research and for invalidity searching. ProQuest has also expanded its ‘Academic Complete’ ebook collection with the addition of 6,000 ebooks from Taylor & Francis.

 

Company news
Questel acquired ULT Research. ULT Research develops Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) software and is based in Japan. The software will now be enhanced with Questel’s patent and trademark data.

 

Financial news
Alphabet, the company who owns Google published its 10Q accounts reporting $14,324m increase in sales over the same 9 month period in 2016. Most of Google’s revenue comes from advertising which is implemented through AdWords, DoubleClick Bid Manager and DoubleClick AdExchange which customers buy as ‘Cost-per-click’ or ’Cost-per-impression’ and commission on purchases of Apps through Google-Play. Alphabet also reported on its two life science companies Calico (investigating lifespan and diseases related to ageing). AbbVie is a collaborator. And Verily, a health data company.

 

Forthcoming events

In November Patbase , STN and Questel are all holding user meetings and trainings around Europe. Deep Search Nine, MD Klaus Kater will be talking at the LII conference in December, this year’s meeting will be at the Business Design Centre in London. Klaus’s presentation will be on Managing intelligence in the age of automated deep search and web analysis.

 

Past events
This year’s EPO PIC conference was held in Sofia, the conference attracted around 330 attendees, and a 35 companies and patent offices took part in the exhibition.   The exhibition is a great place to meet newcomers in the patent information field, and this year several companies from the IP service industry also presented. There is a growing trend towards merging of patent information with IP management software. This year Continux GmbH, (IP Management software), octimine technologies (patent search) , Patently (search and IP management), and Teqmine Analytics (task-based search) all made their debut.