PatBase News October 2013Legal Status EnhancementsDevelopment of data focusing on Legal Status of patent documents in PatBase has introduced new search functionality that will assist users in making informed decisions regarding freedom-to-operate in the marketplace, technology transfer and licensing opportunities and competitive intelligence. Used in conjunction with existing features such as direct national register links and colour-coded legal status tables, these latest enhancements will benefit any searcher looking for concise legal status information for patents.

Legal Status Search

To improve search efficiency, we have completed a project to create Legal Event Groupings. Similar events (for example Lapsed/Expired/Ceased/Dead) are grouped together and can now be searched simultaneously from the Legal Status search form, saving valuable time.

The display of legal status events has also been improved with the addition of an Event group column in the INPADOC family status table.

Event groups column in INPADOC status table 1

Legal Status TimelineThe new Legal Status Timeline gives you a fresh way to obtain an overview of the legal events that have occurred during the lifetime of a patent application. A graphical timeline view of legal status events, such as the grant or lapse of a patent, for all members of the patent family is available for each record. The colour-coded timeline makes it easy to see events over time, with a legend provided for quick reference.

New Legal Status TimelineStatus information is additionally available for EP (European) designated states once the European patent has granted – this represents a distinct advantage to PatBase users since this information is not readily available on other patent search platforms.

Status for EP designated states displayedAdditionally, the Timeline can be embedded in your patent reports by including Legal Status in your custom display format. Export in your custom format and a link to the table is included in the export.

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Grant commandsCompleting the array of new legal status enhancements, commands have been introduced to PatBase allowing you to search across the database for any records containing granted patents from any country with a single database command.

To retrieve families containing a grant, use the ‘GRANT=YES’ or ‘GRANT=ALL’ command.

To retrieve families containing grants for particular patent authorities/countries, use the ‘GRANT=CC’ command where ‘CC’ is the country code e.g. GRANT=EP

NEW: PatBase Analytics Version OneWe are pleased to announce the launch of a brand new PatBase Analytics module.Available as part of your PatBase subscription at no extra cost, the powerful new analytics functionality allows predefined analysis templates to be applied to up to 100,000 records at one time, with graphs pre-loaded for rapid display.

The new version allows users to analyse much larger numbers of documents at once, so facilitating more competitor and product analyses to be performed directly in PatBase, without needing to extract data into a third party software.

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New standardisation on Assignee names is being implemented for more efficient competitor analysis. Results can be analysed by country, year, assignee, inventor, IPC, CPC, Agent and keywords, and results can be grouped by application or by family – or you can switch easily between the two.The new analytics are also available directly from links on records when viewing results such as for agent or classification information – for example if you click on a classification, you will be able to access the classification analytics report.

PatBase Analytics can be accessed from ‘more’ options on the search history page, or from the analytics button at the top of the results list when viewing results.

More programming is currently underway in preparation for the next version of PatBase Analytics, which will deliver further precision and capability and take advantage of the PatBase Corporate Tree Project. PatBase may be used with third party software tools too, to provide deep analysis, so let us know if you have special needs in this area.

System capacity upgradeSystem capacity for PatBase has recently been quadrupled to enable faster search and display speeds and more advanced functionality. The increased power behind the scenes has allowed the Minesoft and RWS in-house development team to introduce important enhancements to PatBase including sequence searching and left-hand truncation.

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Genetic sequence searchingA recent development project has led to new search capability in the area of genetics research. PatBase now offers biological sequence searching for both polypeptides/proteins and nucleic acids. We have developed this new search capability for US applications and granted patent documents, from 2005 onwards. The initial coverage will be extended further to other patent collections and we welcome feedback on the functionality and requirements. Search either the text within a sequence file for the name of the sequence or source, e.g. “Vaccinia virus”, or for the actual encoded sequences, eg. “atgtcatctt”. Subsequences (fragments of sequences or patterns) can also be searched for. Please note that the new search form option is not searching the full text of the document, it is searching the separate sequence file. The number of sequences within the document is displayed as an additional indication.”

Sequence Search Form

An option to save the sequence file is provided. The sequence search form is located under the “Search” tab on the PatBase toolbar.”

Sequence file 5

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Left-hand truncation enabled Another benefit of the capacity upgrade is that PatBase now supports rapid searching of queries containing left-hand truncation.Left-hand truncation is useful for terms that support complex prefixes or that might begin with a string of numbers such as a compound, meaning that patent searchers in biology or chemistry fields will particularly benefit from the new features. It is also useful for searching in languages other thanEnglish - patent searchers using Germanic languages with compound words, for example, would find the option can be applied to looking for the German words *zange and *schieber, embedded in a longer word.

Other enhancements you might have missed:Add folder notes during review

Notes can now be added when you are reviewing results - add the record to a folder using the folder shortcuts, and you can add a note at the same time. There is no need to be in the open folder to add a note.

Explore searchWhen you run a search, a box appears at the top of the history screen giving you the option to ‘Explore search.’

This breaks down your search to show you how many hits each keyword got.

Explore search’ can also be accessed from the ‘more’ options menu.

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Edit and resend last searchNow there is the option to ‘Edit and resend’ your search which makes it quicker and easier to rectify a mistake or make a modification straight away in your search query and rerun it.

Orangebook data in PatBase recordsFor researchers working in pharmaceutical fields, the recent incorporation of FDA Orangebook data into PatBase records further adds value to the review process. Relevant FDA data associated with the retrieved patents is displayed on the PatBase record, with links out to a more detailed record on Minesoft’s Orangebook, a powerful, user-friendly and free-of-cost web interface for searching the FDA’s authoritative approved drug database.

FDA data displayed on record

Links to records on Minesoft Orangebook

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Chinese Interface for expert searchingA new Chinese interface for PatBase Advanced was launched at the start of September to facilitate searching for the increasing numbers of Chinese-speaking PatBase users.

New Chinese Welcome page

The full interface including search forms and help files has been translated into Chinese, strengthening the position of the database as a vital global corporate resource for R&D and Competitive Intelligence. PatBase Advanced is already available with full English and Japanese interfaces, whilst PatBase Express (the end-user version) is currently available in English, Japanese, Chinese, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese.

To further boost functionality in PatBase for Chinese-speakers, over 20 million European, PCT and US patent documents have been machine translated into Chinese and are easily searchable from the new interface.

The new interface was well received by patent information professionals attending the Patent Information Annual Conference of China (PIAC) in Beijing, at the China National Convention Center on the 12th and 13th of September.

CoverageMajor development work recently has focused on preparing data for significant new features such as the Legal Status Grouping, Biological Sequence searching and the new PatBase Analytics tools. In addition, new patent and related data enhances PatBase coverage in several areas:

• Russian data (applications, patents and utility models) from 1994 to date – bibliographic information and full-text with searchable machine translations and a representative image.

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On Thursday we delivered a Product Presentation showcasing the newly-launched full Chinese interface for PatBase Advanced and addition of Chinese language machine translations of US, EP and PCT documents. On Friday Jia Lu (Minesoft London) and Hua Wang (RWS Beijing) delivered a PatBase Workshop in Chinese to over 45 delegates.

Jia and Hua deliver the Workshop

The conference was very well attended, with the opportunity for lots of PatBase demonstrations and we received great feedback on the new interface and PatBase search capability from visitors to our exhibition stand.www.piac-china.com/eng/piac2013Index.html

Upcoming Exhibitions in 2013

Exhibition Date LocationOpen Innovation Models 23rd October 2013 Copenhagen, Denmark

EPO Patent InformationConference

22nd - 24th October 2013 Bologna, Italy

VPP Autumn 24th - 25th October 2013 Bremen, GermanyAIDB 24th - 25th October 2013 Bologna, ItalyTokyo Patent Information Fair 6th - 8th November 2013 Tokyo, Japan

IP Service World 25th - 26th November 2013

Munich, Germany