More Patent Summarization Tools: Key Content and Concepts from Questel

What is the best way to summarize a patent document?  In a past blog post, we looked at both free online summarization tools and a summary tool available on PatBase.  The free online tools failed to adequately summarize a patent, since these tools condense the text based on number of sentences, and patent claims often include lengthy, complex run-on sentences.  The PatBase ”Summarise” tool produced much more concise summaries based on the percentage of text, but the tool wasn’t transparent about the extraction methods it used to produce the summaries.  We concluded in the last post that patent professionals will probably find the best patent summaries from human-produced Derwent Abstracts from the Derwent World Patent Index.

However, there are even more patent summary options available for users who have access to the FamPat database on the QPAT or Orbit.com platforms created by Questel: Key Content and Concepts.  Key Content organizes the most important content from the patent document into three main fields (Object of the Invention, Advantages and Drawbacks of the prior art, and Independent Claims), and the Concepts section includes important keywords and themes that has been semantically extracted from the text. Continue reading to learn about the patent summary options available on FamPat!

Intellogist Round-up: Orbit.com Updates, New USGENE BLAST Search Portal, and Advertising on Intellogist!

Our last two Intellogist round-ups highlighted some important updates on patent search systems and big changes on the Intellogist wiki, and today’s round-up won’t disappoint you! First up, the Orbit.com patent and design search portal from Questel is releasing a new update, and we have the details of that update summed up on the Intellogist wiki.  Next, we’ll look at the new search portal for USGENE, a database that allows users to search all available peptide and nucleotide sequences from the published applications and issued patents of the USPTO.  Learn how you can sign up for a free 30-day trial of this search portal.  Finally, we’ll look at how you can advertise your patent or trademark search products through Intellogist and reach an entire community of intellectual property professionals.

After the jump, learn about the Orbit.com update, the USGENE BLAST Search Portal, and advertising opportunities on Intellogist!

How to Manage Patent Research Projects: Tracking

There are many aspects to patent searching that are important, yet non-obvious (pardon the pun). As I discussed in the “Top 5 Worst Mistakes in a Patent Search” post, two of the foundations to a good patent search are effective communication and management. Patent search projects can be complex and unwieldy if they are not properly and concisely organized.

To this end, it’s important that you and your team come up with a system to organize and track workflow during a patent search project. One of the easiest ways to do this is to utilize the project tracking features that your patent search system of choice employs. In many cases, sub accounts or project IDs are available to help monitor what (and how much) is getting done on that important job of yours.

Read along as I discuss how these tracking features can help you on your next project!

Are your chemical structure searches catching Markush claims?

There are only a few commercial information providers that can cope with the challenge of querying the chemical information disclosed in Markush structure claims in patents.   If you’re not familiar with Markush patent claims,  they are patent claims which describe generic patent structures that could include many different interchangeable parts.  These complex patent claims can disclose hundreds of different potential chemical compounds by describing them in generic ways.  For an example, see the chemical structure searching section of our Best Practices wiki article on Chemistry and Pharmaceuticals Searching.

Some chemical information companies have been interested in creating registries of known chemical substances that exist anywhere (not just in patent art).  For example, the Chemical Abstracts Service has a well-known file of chemical substances called CAS REGISTRY, and the ChemSpider database is a newer service which aggregates publicly available chemical data from the web into a single repository.  But searching Markush claims is not just a matter of querying a database of known structures.  To conduct a successful Markush search, a search engine must be able to search through the patent claim language and understand all the possible compounds that may be covered by structures described in  generic chemical terms.   For example, how would you teach a computer to understand that a patent which claims a compound substituted by “an alkyl, an alkoxy, hydroxy, or amino,” is a good match for the specific chemical structure you drew as a query?

Are you effectively using Japanese File Index and F-terms?

As an English-speaking patent searcher, sure, you feel comfortable looking up US and IPC classification codes. The classification schedules are easy enough to browse, and you probably understand the hierarchical organization of the systems pretty well. But what about Japanese patent searching – can you use the Japanese national patent classification system with the same confidence ?

Japan is an important source in patent searching – it is well known in the IP industry that the Japanese patent office produces a high volume of patent literature and that this collection is rich in important technical innovations.  As one of the Trilateral offices, the JPO has worked on initiatives to make its collection more accessible to non-Japanese speakers, including the introduction of the Patent Abstracts of Japan file, the major source of English abstracts for Japanese patent applications.

However, to more effectively search their own collection, the Japanese patent office developed two in-house classification systems, known as Japanese File Index terms and Japanese F-terms, respectively.   To effectively search the Japanese collection in-depth, it’s a good idea to get acquainted with these two systems.  Fortunately, these two class schedules  are available (at least in part) in English.   When used in concert, they can provide a powerful method for effective Japanese patent searching.

Are you catching reassigned US patents in your search?

Update: This post has been edited to reflect that PatBase is jointly operated by Minesoft and RWS Group.

Experienced patent searchers know that searching for patent databases by company name is hard – and I mean really hard.  A company which owns a patent is called the patent “assignee” in the US.  Take a look at our assignee best practices wiki article over on the main Intellogist site to get an overview of some of the obstacles that can trip you up during this kind of search.

One thing that makes patent owner searching so difficult is simply that patents change hands, and when they do, the information published on the patent face is no longer correct.   Another difficulty is that these types of transactions are not always on record at the USPTO.  However, the USPTO does keep a US patent assignment database of all the transactions that they *have* been notified about.   And fortunately, patent search vendors can update their electronic databases with the new assignment information.  (by the way, as far as I know, US reassignment data is the only reassignment data that gets collected and added into commercial patent search products on a regular basis.)

Here is a quick summary of what some major commercial providers do with US reassignment data:

The Access to Specialized Patent Information Program

Boy, the WIPO news keeps coming! This time, WIPO in partnership with LexisNexis, Minesoft, ProQuest, Questel-Orbit, Thomson Reuters and WIPS (a veritable patent search system all-star lineup) has announced the Access to Specialized Patent Information (ASPI) program. What is this patent acronym program backed by more than a half dozen groups you may ask?

ASPI is an initiative to provide free or low cost access to patent search systems and tools to IP offices, universities and research institutes in developing countries. The patent search systems chosen for this program are:

• TotalPatent
• Patbase
• ProQuest Dialog
• Orbit.com
• Thomson Innovation
• WIPS Global

For more info on the program, including eligibility requirements and why this makes sense for the global IP community, read on!

Intro to Short Term Patents

It would make sense that not all patents require the same duration of protection. Certain areas of technology may only be useful for short periods of time and the applicant may only be interested in paying for an appropriate protective term. On the other hand, other areas of technology may take a long time to arrive to market and therefore it could be argued that these technologies deserve protective extensions of term (we’ll get to these later). “Short Term Patents” is a catchall term within this post to refer to any by-design non-regular term patent (i.e. not ~20 years).

There are several different kinds of “short-term patents.” Often times these are under the category of “utility models”, although for example, the Irish Patent Office refers to them as “short-term” patents. Other patent offices that offer abbreviated/short-term/utility protection as an alternative to “regular” (usually around 20 year) patents include Japan and Germany (both countries have a strong tradition in this type of patent) as well as a number of other countries such as Ireland, Australia, France, and Taiwan. The general rule in such countries is that the applicant must choose to either pursue a utility model or a patent, per invention, but not cannot receive both.