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Chinese,
Japanese, Russian, Korean and Tai
full-text collections can be queried in the native language, while English-speaking users can also search across the large collection of stored English machine translations to retrieve patents.
Many patent databases today facilitate searching in different languages, and PatBase incorporates sophisticated cross-lingual search tools, some developed in cooperation with WIPO, as well as providing the search interface itself in different languages. PatBase is currently available in English, Japanese and Chinese, while the Express version comes in seven languages.
The next step Visualisation and analysis is increasingly a crucial part of a patent search. While having access to comprehensive patent information is important, today’s users are demanding more from a patent database. Organisations need to be able to extract relevant and meaningful information and visualise trends from patent data in order to make strategic decisions.
Online patent search tools such as PatBase—the global patent database developed by Minesoſt and RWS Group—have made the exploitation of these huge quantities of patent information more time and cost-effective, but challenges remain to effectively harnessing the power of patent information. One of the greatest obstacles is the language barrier.
According to the same WIPO report, continued rapid filing growth in China is the main driver behind the overall global increase in patent filings. Significant growth was also reported at the IP offices of the Russian Federation, Mexico, Brazil and Germany, among others—all of which means increasing quantities of published in many different languages.
patent data
PatBase, launched a decade ago, was the first Western searchable patent system to provide a non-Latin language search engine, allowing users to conduct searches in their native language across the extensive non-Latin patent collection.
www.worldipreview.com .worldipr
Since patent documents are purposely draſted to be difficult to interpret, it is vital that tools exist to help understand patent search results. Te need to carefully and manually read through the patent document will never disappear, particularly for patent legal professionals, but automatic patent
analysis can be useful to
obtain a rapid overview of technology trends or competitor patenting activities.
Te main commercial patent databases currently on offer have
developed integrated patent
information analysis tools, allowing analyses to be performed directly on retrieved patent search results. At the end of 2013, Minesoſt and RWS Group announced the launch of PatBase Analytics, allowing predefined analysis templates to be applied to up to 100,000 records at one time.
Te new module allows competitor and product analyses to be performed directly in PatBase, without needing to extract data
for use in
third-party patent-analysis soſtware. As with other patent analysis solutions, large amounts of complex patent data can be quickly analysed and represented in a graphical way that is easy to understand and has a visual appeal ideal for inclusion in reports and presentations (see Figure 1). Standalone patent analysis soſtware also exists
Whether it is in-built analysis tools or dedicated soſtware,
patent information analysis—or
‘patinformatics’, as it is also known—enables users to gain valuable insights that can lead to faster decision-making and inform business strategy. Trends and relationships on a macro level can be uncovered that would not be perceptible when working with patents on a document by document basis.
Keeping track While analysis of patent information provides a snapshot in time (or over a period of time) for a technology area or a competitor patent portfolio, ongoing monitoring
of patent
information offers a way to maintain current awareness and ensure competitive advantage in the marketplace.
In the past, tracking the status of patent
applications (either a company’s own filings or its competitors’) presented a time-consuming manual task but web-based monitoring services are available that have automated the process. Minesoſt’s PatentTracker tool, for example, tracks changes to a variety of patent registers and automatically sends an email alert whenever there is any change to the status of a patent application or a patent family. Te service runs on the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO),
World Intellectual Property Review Annual 2014 45
for information specialists wishing to carry out more in-depth analyses, and most patent database providers will support links to directly export search results from their databases into third party tools such as Intellixir or VantagePoint.
Figure 1: Keyword visualisation using PatBase Analytics
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