Meeting the Challenges of Data Collection and Analysis

As a leader in patent analysis, Landon IP has expert searchers who answer complex questions on a daily basis to produce the highest quality results. If you work with patents, you know the obstacles we face: data collections are huge and unwieldy; errors in the data are rampant; and in short, nothing involving patent data is ever easy. Today, I’m going to share some of our most basic strategies for producing high-quality datasets that lead to reliable results. Read on to get an insight into these best practices.

How to Use PatentOptimizer™ Analytics to Filter Documents and Locate Keyword Variants within a Patent Result Set

LexisNexis® PatentOptimizer™ is a patent analysis tool created by LexisNexis, and it was designed to assist patent attorneys and agents when drafting patent documents.  The PatentOptimizer™ Analytics feature may additionally be of use to patent searchers, who can load a set of up to 2000 documents into the Analytics tool and granularly filter the result set by a wide variety of criteria in order to locate very specific subsets within the broader result set.  Searchers who have narrowed their result set down to a list of hundreds of relevant documents can use the Analytics tool to locate only key documents through the filter options. The Analytics tool can also be used to generate a thesaurus on the fly for selected sets of documents and locate all variations of each term/phrase listed in the thesaurus.  This feature may be used by searchers to identify various important keywords and synonyms in a relevant result set in order to expand their search queries.  In general, PatentOptimizer Analytics offers tools that can help patent searchers either narrow their result set (through the filters) or expand their result set (through the keyword variants in the on-the-fly thesaurus).

I recently had the opportunity to watch a demonstration of PatentOptimizer™ Analytics, so continue reading for an overview of the filter and thesaurus options which can help you narrow or expand your patent search results set!

New Intellogist Report on Orbit.com!

We’ve just released an Intellogist Report on an important patent search system, Orbit.com!  Check out the new Intellogist Report to learn all the coverage details about this major player in the patent search system field:

• Get an in-depth look at Orbit.com’s patent and non-patent-literature coverage, including modules that cover industrial designs and US patent litigation!

Search for industrial designs on the DesignFinder module of the Orbit platform.

• Learn about the unique FamPat file hosted on the Orbit.com platform, which organizes records into invention-based FamPat families and includes additional indexing through Key Content (Object of the invention, Advantages of the new invention and Drawback of prior art, and Independent claims) and Key Concepts.

Continue reading for an overview of more content from the Orbit.com Intellogist Report, plus a quick snippet from the report which outlines some of the strengths and weaknesses of this major patent search tool!

Free Features of Patent Buddy, Part 2: Create a Patent Portfolio and View Top Patent Attorneys

Last time, we looked at the patent search and analysis options of the online community Patent Buddy.  Patent Buddy is a free patent search and analysis website originally created by a group of patent attorneys in 2007.  The site offers free search of US patent records after 1980, as well as search sections for patent owners, inventors, IPC classes, patent attorneys, and patent firms.  The site also includes some data visualization features, such as a breakdown of patent owners within a specific IPC class.

Registered users of Patent Buddy get the added benefit of access to the Dashboard, My Portfolio and Following sections of the website, where the user can select to receive updates related to chosen patent records, owners, inventors, and technology classes.  Patent Buddy also includes a community for registered users, who can view a directory of other members (and add their profile to the directory), join groups, and post or view job offers.  Finally, Patent Buddy has created its own lists of top-rated patent prosecutors, firms, owners, and inventors.

Continue reading to learn about these portfolio, alert, and community features of Patent Buddy!

Free Features of Patent Buddy, Part 1: Patent Search and Analysis

Patent analysts require sophisticated tools to create detailed and customized patent landscapes for clients who need to  gain insight into a particular technology field or group of competitors.  Analysts can take their pick from a number of subscription-based patent analysis and visualization tools, but free patent analysis and visualization products are few and far between.  Even when a patent search site offers free visualization tools, the product is usually very basic.  Patexia, for example, allows users to create simple graphs based on searches of US patent documents dating back to 1974.  This tool doesn’t even reach the complexity or coverage of the patent analysis features offered in conjunction with subscription patent search systems like Thomson Innovation or TotalPatent, but the free tool is a fast and easy way to quickly visualize trends relating to a particular IPC code, country, assignee, agent, or inventor over a period of time (for US patent records). In short, free patent analysis tools may provide a useful informal overview of trends for smaller US patent datasets, but results should ultimately be taken with a grain of salt.

Bearing that in mind, I recently visited a free patent community called Patent Buddy, which offers a host of free patent search and analysis features covering US patent records after 1980.  The site also allows users to search through patent owners, inventors, agents, and technology classes, and some visualization options offer helpful insights into patent ownership trends within specific IPC classes.

After the jump, learn about all the search and analysis features available on Patent Buddy for US patent documents, patent owners, inventors, agents, and IPC classes!

Beyond Latent Semantic Analysis: Linguistic Genomics on M·CAM DOORS™

Professional patent analysts are always looking for new tools with unique patent data analysis and visualization features.  I recently viewed a demonstration of the “intellectual property risk management tool” M·CAM DOORS™, which utilizes a distinctive technology known as linguistic genomics to identify related prior art and displays these results through interactive visualizations.  I had the opportunity to speak with the creator of the linguistic genomics technology, CEO Dr. David E. Martin of M·CAM, Inc., and he explained how linguistic genomics is an analytical technology that has evolved beyond keyword searching and latent semantic analysis, due to it’s ability to analyze unstructured data systems and identify multiple perspectives regarding the target simultaneously.

Read on to learn how linguistic genomics can be used to locate previously unidentified prior art, and see a few of the visualizations and data sets produced using the linguistic genomics technology on M·CAM DOORS Version 7.

The Next Generation of WIPS Global: WIPS Global ADVANCED – Part 2

The WIPS Global Intellogist Report has been fully updated, and the big news is that a new system, WIPS Global ADVANCED, will be replacing WIPS Global version 4 by March 2013.  Last week we looked at the patent coverage and search features on WIPS Global ADVANCED, including the integrated search forms, step search options, and the new family, citation, and company search forms.  Now, let’s explore the result display and analysis features for the system, such as an Easy Viewer option to quickly scroll through search results and the SmartAngle analysis tool for analyzing collections of results.

Read on to learn about the analysis and viewing features of WIPS Global ADVANCED, and I’ll summarize what I felt were the main strengths and weaknesses of the system!

The Next Generation of WIPS Global: WIPS Global ADVANCED – Part 1

Hot on the heels of the updated Inspec Intellogist Report, we now have a fully updated WIPS Global Intellogist Report.  WIPS Global hasn’t seen too many changes since 2009, but some recent updates include:

• The latest version of ThinKlear Beta 0.1.1.0 became available on the WIPS Global website in February 2009.  This version only incorporated minimal changes, however.
• According to an informational pamphlet titled “WIPS Introduction,” WIPS obtained an ISO 27001 security certification in 2010.
• All full document images on WIPS were replaced with PDF files in January 2011.  The PIView program is no longer needed to review patent images on WIPS Global.

The biggest update, however, is that the current version of WIPS Global 4.0 will soon be retired, and a new system called WIPS Global ADVANCED will be taking its place!  The service was launched on February 1, 2012, and WIPS Global ADVANCED will completely replace WIPS 4.0 by March 31, 2013.

After the jump, we’ll look at the patent coverage and search options available on WIPS Global ADVANCED!

A Free Chinese Patent Search Site that’s Full of Suprises: Zhihuiya.com

 Zhihuiya.com is a free Chinese patent search site, created by Wisdom buds Information Technology (Suzhou) Co., Ltd, which managed to surprise me multiple times.   The site is only available in Chinese, so I’d recommend  translating the site interface through a free online translation service (like Google Translate or Bing Translator), and search queries should also be translated into Chinese before being entered in the search form (although English abstracts are available, so English queries do produce results).  Native Chinese speakers will have an easier time utilizing this search site, but I’d still recommend that any prior art searcher test this site due to a few surprisingly useful features: broad coverage (including Norwegian patents), a wide variety of search forms (including a command-line interface and a batch search form),  and both Chinese and English abstracts are available in the full record format.  Other useful features, such as a bulk download feature, patent analysis functions, and the option to email records to other users, only seem to be available to registered, paying users.

After the jump, learn about the surprising coverage of Zhihuiya.com and which features are accessible for free to registered and non registered users!

A Concept Identification and Visualization Tool for Patent Analysts: Leximancer

Leximancer is an automated text-mining tool produced by an Australian company of the same name, and I recently had the opportunity to test an online version of the tool called LexiPortal.  Leximancer creates detailed lists of concepts and tags prevalent in a set of documents or data, and the user can then customize the concept lists and create a “concept map” or generate a report through the Insight Dashboard.  Although I experienced some problems with uploading documents in the trial version of this system, the tool still may be very useful to patent analysts who want to identify common themes within a set of patent documents.

After the jump, learn about the different versions of Leximancer, how to access the tool, and read about my experience testing the trial version of LexiPortal!