Digest XV - January - February 2018

The 2018 monthly editions of the Blog are a little late publishing, because as you can see we have been busy behind the scenes creating a new website for Extract Information! I hope you agree the layout for the Blog is much improved. A reminder that the Blog follows around 60 organisations involved with information and IP, including the offices and commercial and free patent information databases.   We bring you an overview of the latest new products, content, tools and directions from the patent offices with links so you can go back to the original source to find out more. The raw material for the blog is identified using ds9 web tracking software.   In April if you are going to be at the IC-SDV conference in Nice, do take the opportunity to find out more, Extract Information and deepSearch 9 will both be there.

 

Section I: IPO Office News

 

Inter office meetings and agreements

The EPO signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Institute of Industrial Property of Argentina (INPI) on the introduction of the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) to start in January 2019. The CPC is a joint project by the USPTO and the EPO. It is used by 26 patent offices worldwide. A tri-lateral agreement between KIPO, SIPO and JPO was signed at the end of 2017. The offices plan to cooperate in IP matters of common interest. The Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property hosted a panel discussion on innovation, availability and affordability of medical products and will publish some articles based on the discussions. The initiative may lead to greater access to medicines, in particular for developing economies.   The discussion was not just about patents, and pricing but also about defining the value of innovation. Naturally there is uncertainty surrounding the UK’s membership of many organisations post Brexit. When members of EPO and the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) met in January this was one item on the agenda. At the meeting it was confirmed that Brexit will have no effect on the UK’s membership of the European Patent Organization, nor on UK patent attorneys to prosecute patents at the EPO because the EPO is not an EU organisation. The European Patent Organisation was founded in 1973 and has 38 member states. Applicants using the EPO patent system can obtain patent protection in up to 42 countries through a single patent application.

 

Individual office news

The EPO recently completed an internal reorganization. The ‘patent granting process’ division now has just three sectors 1) mobility & mechatronics; 2) healthcare, biotechnology & chemistry and 3) information & communications technology, mirroring the merging of technology innovations.   The Swiss patent office (IGE IPI) published its  2016/2017 annual report recording that most patents with effect for Switzerland and Liechtenstein arrive through the EPO, and that 1,721 national patent applications were submitted and 74 PCT applications.   Switzerland and 45 other countries participate in WIPO’s ePCT online filing programme. On a different scale SIPO (Chinese patent office) released their 2017 statistics noting 1.38 million national invention and 51,000 PCT patent applications were filed last year. The USA TTAB (Trademark Trial and Appeal Board) is celebrating 60 years of operation in 2018. The TTAB hears ex parte (single party) and inter parte (two or more party) cases. Ex parte cases are usually concerning appeals against registration refusal decisions, whereas the inter-parte cases are mostly oppositions.

 

Section II: Commercial data, search, analysis

 

Patent Content

Without good content, good patent searching is going to fall short. Read about IFI Claims Patent Services high quality data preparation process which includes company name standardization, full text machine translations, and expiration date calculations which actually include term extensions for US patents.

 

Patent Searching and online viewing of results

Ambercite, the patent search product which based on citation analysis and AI to bring a fresh approach to patentability and invalidity searching published an interesting analysis on the Keytruda (pembrolizumab) patent family. Traditional patent searching is based around the use of word searching and classifications. DWPI has just released new manual codes for 2018 with 36 new codes, 15 in the chemical index and 21 in general/ mechanical/ electrical index. The manual codes look up facility can be used by anyone through the Clarivate Analytics website. Gridlogics announced some new search and analysis tools for its PatSeer database including incremental search, filter sets (group multiple filters together for enhanced precision), new bubble charts, new visualizations. IFI Claims published its analysis of the 320,000 US granted (issued) patents from 2017. The analysis found that IBM was granted the most patents last year. An interactive view is available, and IFI noted eight technology trends from an analysis of growth in patent classification assigned. STN International reported that the handling of Chinese dual filings is now improved on the Derwent World Patents Index. Dual filings occur when a simultaneous Chinese patent for invention (kind code A) and utility model (kind code U) are applied for at the same time. These are not convention equivalents , so are not picked up in patent families. Applicants have the choice later to decide which application to go forward with. The utility model is granted within 6-9 months. DWPI now has a method to find these dual filings and add both to the same family. The # symbol indicates the Utility Model.  

Viewing

Patseer also enhanced viewing options allowing language priorities to be set to view equivalents in a family, so if the first language is not present the system defaults to the next choice..

 

Life Sciences NPL Search and analysis

Clarivate Analytics, is reorganizing and giving the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) a larger role central to its Scientific and Academic Research Group. ISI was established in 1960 by Eugene Garfield and produced the Science Citation Index. Citations analysis remains a vital tool for analysing patent and NPL, and I look forward to greater integration between Web of Science and DWPI. Atrius Health, a US based non-profit health care provider, is using Linguamatics’ NLP (natural language processing) platform to mine unstructured patient data which contains important clinical notes and patient information. The US FDA has also been utilizing Linguamatics’ NLP capabilities to mine drug-label information to discover more about how to prevent potential adverse events from drug-drug interactions. The project looked at co-administration information such as statements regarding time delays recommended in between taking different drugs. Information was sourced from the Daily Med FDA resource of marketed drug labelling. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) Global database now contains dissertations from the Philippines Women’s University. PQDT contains 4.5 million dissertations and theses. Two key life sciences databases, Medline and Embase®, require reloads of their thesauri to take into account changes in terms and the hierarchies each year. They are both available now on STN. For the first time Emtree now includes MeSH terms, making searching easier when searching both files, e.g. for comprehensive searches such as systematic reviews. Emtree 2018 includes  297 new drug terms and many new medical device concepts and device trade names.  Full details of the Emtree updates are available.

 

Business data analytics

The RELX Group acquired ThreatMetrix for £580million. ThreatMetrix software monitors devices, and their locations, and uses anonymized identity and behavioural analytics to identify unusual events.

 

Data Storage - archiving

ProQuest is now using Amazon Glacier ‘s secure cloud storage service to provide a long term archive for its library customers who need a safe way to secure their purchased digital content. The ProQuest service is called “SAFE” and it ensures the preservation and access of 600 Terabytes of ProQuest books, newspapers, magazines, government documents, video and audio material used by ProQuest’s academic library customers.

 

 

Section III: IP Legal and IP Management Affairs

China IP Blog China Brand reported that the number of Chinese companies suing western competitors for IP right infringement is growing, one example given was KON which sued Apple. The article also noted that Chinese companies, influenced by China’s ‘go global’ initiative are now registering IP rights abroad. The EU Commission is investigating the possibility to use blockchain technologies to improve the integrity of IP contracts, ownership and licensing agreements. The investigation is part of the Digital Single Market initiatives of which more with the next issue of the blog. Lexis Nexis CounselLink published its 6th annual enterprise legal management trends report which is based on analysis of $30 billion of legal expenditure, 7 million invoices and 1.7 million documents.