InfoBlog Jan-Feb 2019

Welcome to the first edition of the InfoBlog in 2019 covering news published online in January and February as picked up by the deepSEARCH9 newstracker!   If 2018 finished with acquisitions, 2019 has started with even more, with InfoChem and Clarivate Analytics changing ownership, EBSCO acquiring HealthDecision, and Questel acquiring Concur IP. These acquisitions underline the importance of information as an asset as companies build compelling health informatics and IP services tools for decision makers. There’s lots more happening. Read on to discover patent information industry news, life sciences information, and associated company and IP office news.

Section I: Patent databases, scientific, life sciences and legal information news

Platform
Clarivate launched the Cortellis Cloud, built on Amazon Web Services (AWS) , to provide customers with smoother access to Cortellis data and enabling them to more easily link their own data to the Cortellis content. Cortellis provides data collected throughout the drug pipeline from discovery, through clinical trials to regulatory submissions. DeepSearch9 has introduced a new set of APIs allowing company information to be linked to 135 million registered companies. The information can also be mapped to a geographic location.

Content.
Aistemos has added patent litigation data from China, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, and UK to its Cipher database. The data is supplied by MaxVal and complements the US patent litigation data already on Cipher. IFI Claims announced a new data source for its Chinese patents, which will be used for new publications in the first instance; the backfile will be replaced later in 2019. IFI Claims have also announced plans to use Google Translate to produce its machine-translated-into-English patent document collection.

Search
Life Sciences
Each year the two major biomedical databases Embase and Medline / PubMed update their thesauri and introduce new terms to classify new fields, and facilitate retrieval. STN has implemented these new 2019 codes in Embase, with 128 new drug terms added to Emtree and Medline’s MeSH thesaurus was also updated with 360 new headings, most of these were for pharmaceutical compounds. Full details are available on the NLM website for MeSH, where there is also an ‘on-demand’ look up of MeSH terms from a text entry. STN has introduced a new search field called Key Terms.

Patent information
Aptean GenomeQuest has integrated the CAS Biosequences module into its sequence database so both can be searched together. Clarivate updated the DWPI manual codes for 2019. These enable focussed searches to be performed and include 28 new CPI (Chemical Patents Index) codes and 9 new GMPI/EPI codes (ies General and Mechanical Patents Index and Electrical Engineering Patents Index). The new codes typically represent emerging technologies. For example, this year codes for Biocatalysts, and FinTech were added and renewable energy related codes were extended e.g. for Manufacture, and maintenance of solar power systems. Full manual code look up is available on the Clarivate website. DWPI is available through STN and Questel as well as directly. The DWPI database was started in 1963 by Monty Hyams, DWPI is one of the oldest patent family databases.  STN enhanced the France and GB full text patent databases adding to enhance search adding new ‘Key Terms’,  Numeric Property functionality and combination sets for CPC. GB D0 filings have also been added for completeness. Key Terms have been created using a combined linguistic and statistical approach to index the patent document for search and results evaluation.   Key Terms are available in the full text databases for authorities: AU, CA, FR, GB, IN, JP, and WO (PCT). PatentGATE published some interesting statistics of the availability of CPC classifications on JP, CN, and KR patent documents. PatSeer introduced ReleSense, a NLP text processing engine that has been trained using patent terminologies, scientific literature, and clinical trials reports. Gridlogics will utilise it for search and categorisation activities to enhance relevance of results.

User Interface

Reviewing large results sets from the legal status viewpoint has long been a challenge. STN have introduced new display format IFAM2 in its INPADOC and INPAFAM databases which presents the legal event and bibliographic only.

Analytics and Forecasting

Clarivate Analytics released Cortellis Analytics – Drug Timeline and Success Rates (DTSR) in for forecasting in the drug pipeline, enabling continuous and dramatic improvements in pipeline forecasting and R&D investment decisions

Section II IP Management, IP Offices, and IP services

Anaqua recently launched AQX, an IP asset management platform which can be used by both corporations and legal professionals to track innovation and evaluate their IP portfolios. AQX contains financial, and IP portfolio management modules. Anaqua was founded in 2004 to provide IP management software. Anaqua has acquired 5 companies since 2015 including Acclaim IP for its patent search technology which it acquired in 2016.

IP Office news
On 14th January at the DPMA a new trade mark law came into force, introducing the certification mark, and strengthening the rights of trademark owners. The DPMA will introduce certificates which contain a QR code linking through to the electronic Trade Mark Register. The JPO has published some case examples in AI related technologies to highlight the approach which may be taken during examination. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has appointed Thomas Krause as the new Deputy General Counsel for Intellectual Property Law and Solicitor of the USPTO, and Henry “Jamie” Holcombe as the USPTO’s Chief Information Officer..

Section III: Company news, M&A, People news

Anaqua has received significant equity investment from the European private equity firm, Astorg. Astorg will become the controlling shareholder of Anaqua. The Brazilian IP Office, (INPI), is implementing AI search technology developed at CAS to assist its examiners with evaluation of new patent applications. The CAS technology uses semantic, similarity and other machine learning techniques to inform prior art search.

Clarivate Analytics has merged with Churchill Capital Corp and prepares to list on the NYSE as Clarivate. Clarivate launched its ‘Life Science Alliances Program’ which enables specialist health informatics data developers to make their data available as part of the Cortellis Cloud. The first companies to collaborate in the program are Bioinfogate, Vitrana and Waters Corporation.  EBSCO acquired HealthDecision, a leading provider of evidence-based clinical information tools to clinicians and patients at the point of care. HealthDecision software is used in clinical practice, as a conversation enabler between physician and patient, it presents medical data, guidelines, and personalised risk analysis. HealthDecision was founded in 2004 by cardiologist Jon Keevil to provide medical information to assist patients in their decision to begin taking statins to lower cholesterol level. Elsevier announced Kumsal Bayazit is its new Chief Executive Officer. Kumsal has worked at Elsevier since 2004, in Legal, Business and Risk analysis roles, and was most recently responsible for Reed Exhibitions EMEA region. InfoChem GmbH, a cheminformatics company which was founded in 1989 and based in Munich was acquired by DeepMatter Group PLC, for EU2m. Questel acquired Concur IP to complement the MultiLing business which it acquired in 2018. Concur IP provides patent drafting expertise and has expertise in handling licensing and royalties relating to SEPs (Standard Essential Patents).