Report:PatBase/Major Recent Updates

Major Recent Updates

See the Intellogist update policies for more information.

March 2010

This system has been updated since our last review. During our next scheduled update, this article will be revised to include a description of the newly added content and features. In the meantime, an official summary of the new March 2010 features may be found at http://www.patbase.com/enhancements0310.pdf

Features of the March 2010 update include:

• Systran - New On the Fly Machine Translation Function has replaced Google Translate as the default on-the-fly translation tool. Google Translate remains available to searchers as an option.
• Sort order control for Family Table and Full Text view has been added, allowing users to display preferred patent documents in a family at the top of each respective display.
• Key Word in Context view given two new options including limiting Key Word in Context view to specified authorities and offering Key Word in Context directly within full text viewing mode.
• Patent iNSIGHT Pro export now available in the export options screen.

February 2010

Minesoft has announced a partnership to incorporate the Patent iNSIGHT Pro analytics solution from Gridlogics into their PatBase product line.^[1] The combination, called "Minesoft iNSIGHT Pro," will be offered in three versions: Desktop, Enterprise, and SaaS ("Software as a Service," a model in which the user pays for an on-demand license for a software-based service^[2]). The new product will allow PatBase users to import current or saved search results and conduct various analyses. The exact features of Minesoft iNSIGHT Pro have not yet been specified, but the features of the current iNSIGHT Pro product include custom fields for each record, a patent viewer with multi-word highlighting capabilities, "advanced" searching and sorting options, family information exports, Boolean searching within patent portfolios, a claims tree and comparison viewer, and a classification browser.^[3] Gridlogics, as the Indian distributor for the PatBase product,^[4] has had an ongoing relationship with Minesoft. For more information, please see Patent iNSIGHT Pro's press release at http://www.patentinsightpro.com/pr18022010.html.

October 2009

Features of the October 2009 update include:

• A chemical synonym search feature has been added to PatBase. This feature is a chemical thesaurus, accessible through the PatBase search interface, which will pull up related trade names and chemical names based on initial input. Users can select the term or terms of interest provided by the thesaurus, and they will be automatically placed into a PatBase search query. According to a PatBase representative, this information is from the National Library of Medicine database ChemIDplus.^[5]
• Collaboration features have been enhanced through the addition of new folder settings. Users can now define groups of users who may access a given folder, and can set access levels for the folder (read only vs. read/write access). Additionally, PatBase has added an option to share folders with others who do not have PatBase access.
• A search history editor has been added to the system. This feature allows users to edit saved or existing histories on a line by line basis. The edited history will be re-run against the database.
• Exports ordered through the PatBase offline exports feature can now be accessed from an order page.
• Past alerting results are now archived in PatBase and can be retrieved through the system interface (as well as by links from the alert e-mail).
• A new search command has been added which will restrict a search to only publications from a specified country. The format for the new command is FTCC=, where CC is replaced by a specific country code during actual use. The example given in the release notes is FTUS=(jet and ski), which will restrict the full text search to US publications only.
• A strict patent family option has been added to the setting menu. This option allows users to organize PatBase family members into "simple" patent families, which are families where all documents have exactly the same priority data.

An official summary of the new features may be found at https://www.patbase.com/pb200910.pdf

July 2009

Features of the July 2009 update include:

• Improved Custom Display formats: Users may now create up to 5 custom display formats on their personal accounts, and may now include their order of preference for text excerpts from various patent family members, superseding the system default. For example, French-speaking users could now designate that they would like to see French (FR) patent abstracts first, European Patent Office (EP) documents second, WO/PCT documents third, and so on, so that patent text is more likely to be displayed in their preferred language.

• Enhanced PDF Export options: PatBase now offers PDF exports that support "bookmarks" in Adobe. After exporting a set of search results into this format, all records are contained within a single PDF document. The bookmark pane in Adobe will now contain one bookmark, including representative patent number and title, for each family record in the exported dataset, increasing ease of navigation through the entire document. In addition, this export function will also preserve any hit term highlighting, and can support the new custom bibliographic formats described above.

• Enhanced Image-Only Display Format: When viewing records using the Image-only display format, PatBase will now load the esp@cenet image mosaics in a .PNG format in the original browser window, rather than requiring users to open it in a separate PDF viewer. This has increased both load times and browser stability. Abstracts and assignee names are also now included in this format.

• Search Function added to Help Files: Users can now keyword search the PatBase help files.

An official summary of the new features may be found at https://www.patbase.com/patbase0709.pdf.

May 2009

In May 2009, the system was enhanced with new features, including:

• New "Quick" and "Number" search forms: The newly added Quick Search form allows users to conduct a search by typing in a few quick keywords or names (including assignee or inventor names). The Number Wizard allows users to input any document number, even when the type of number (e.g. application, publication, priority) is not known.

• New alerting options: Alerts can now be set for the following events:
  

• The first time a PatBase family is updated with English text
• The first time an assignee is assigned to a PatBase family
• The first time an IPC class is assigned to a PatBase family

• New image display format: PatBase now offers a new image display format which allows users to see the representative image and patent drawing mosaic side-by-side in the results set (document titles are included, but abstracts are not). These mosaics are displayed sequentially, and multiple mosaics are loaded onto the same page. This feature is designed to facilitate the review of full patent drawing sets for each record in the hit list without requiring the user to open any new browser windows.

A new display format for results sets loads multiple document mosaics on the same page.^[6]

• Japanese and Korean assignee names: PatBase now displays the original non-Latin character text for Japanese and Korean assignee names as well as the transliterated (Latin) text versions. PatBase suggests that cutting and pasting these names into the non-Latin text search engine may result in additional hits on these company names.

• Enhancement to the graphic displays of PatBase analysis functions: All analysis screens have been re-designed, and the classification analysis feature now shows class definitions organized into hierarchies.

• New export function for VantagePoint Analysis tool: PatBase users can now export results sets directly into VantagePoint analysis software without having to re-format any data during the import process. To learn more about this analysis tool, see our Intellogist Report on VantagePoint.

An official summary of the new features may be found at https://www.patbase.com/patbase0509.pdf.

March 2009

In March 2009, the system was enhanced with new features, including:

• A "Snapshot" feature that allows users to visualize the contents of results sets broken down by assignee, classification, publication country and publication date.
• A new display format, "Scan," which allows users to quickly skim results for interesting hits. Search hits are displayed in condensed format with alternating background colors to make them more distinct. Title, abstract, assignee and thumbnail images are among the few data fields included in this display format.
• Additional sorting options for hit lists, including the ability to sort by relevance and by the most-cited patent families. The relevancy rank is said to rely on "natural language algorithms and automatic term weighting."

An official summary of the new features may be found at http://www.patbase.com/patbase0309.pdf.

November 2008

As of November 2008, some full text records for Russian-language PCT documents were present. This collection was said to cover documents published from December 1, 2007.

October 2008

During this major update, PatBase announced a new interface for searching non-Latin text records, including records in Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Russian (see the Non-Latin Text Search section for more information).

PatBase also announced plans to expand their non-Latin text coverage, particularly by adding Russian documents, as well as PCT applications published in non-Latin languages. However, projected dates of coverage were not available at the time this plan was announced.

To complement its non-Latin text searching feature and additional data coverage, PatBase also announced that a Google Translate feature has been added as an alternative to PatBase's internal machine translation software. Both options are now available for non-Latin text records.

Some additional features were also announced in this update. First, although it had already been available to users for a short period before this time, PatBase officially announced that agent/representative data is now fully searchable for United States (US), European Patent Office (EP), and Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT/WO) documents. Additionally, PatBase announced that this update also includes direct links to legal status records on the Chinese and Japanese patent office websites. And finally, the VizPat analysis feature now includes pop-up class definitions for classes displayed in analysis results (see the Analyzing Results section of this article for more information).

May 2008

May 2008 brought about a number of enhancements to PatBase; the majority of these updates being improvements to the functionality of the system. Keyboard shortcuts were added to allow for easier navigation in the view and browse results sections. Multiple popup windows are now capable of being displayed to aid in viewing full-text and mosaics, among others, in separate windows.

Folder management was improved. New commands were added to allow folders and saved searches to be searched via the command line without having to open them. The user can now specify who is allowed to view a shared folder. Further folders can be sorted by name, date, or number of records.

Enhancements were made to how a record is displayed. The Custom and CSV formats can now display the number of citations, forward and backward. The record view will now display agent information, allowing one to view what agent filed each patent application in a family. Furthermore, the user is now able to view a breakdown of the designated states each application in a family has been filed in.

Finally, PatBase added a keyword analysis tool called VizPat allowing users to see a ranking of the keywords used within a search string. One can see how often terms are used in the text, how many times a term is used in proximity to another term, and a variety of other uses. One may narrow the analysis to only French, German, or US claims to determine keywords in those languages only. Overall this tool will be useful to determining important keywords to use in further search strings.

February 2008

A major February 2008 enhancement added quite a lot of new data, as well as new classifications, search commands, and a new Alert viewer feature. First, major enhancements were made to Japanese data, with 7 million Japanese utility model records added to the database. The enhancements also included the addition of Japanese-language full text records for patent applications, including clipped and embedded drawing images, back to 2004 (clipped images are representative images taken from the patent drawing pages, while embedded images appear within the patent text. Embedded images appear in the PatBase electronic text in the same place as in the original patent). Preliminary full text collections of Chinese and Korean documents were also added to the system: the Chinese collection spanned about 1985-1999 for applications and utility models, and the original text includes titles, abstracts and claims, while the Korean collection spanned 2005-2007, and includes original language titles, abstracts, claims, and description sections. PatBase announced that the system developers are working on the further expansion of these collections.

In addition to the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean full-text collection enhancements, the February update brought lots of other enhancements to Asian records in PatBase. It enhanced the Chinese and Taiwanese collection with bibliographic records for both utility models and unexamined patents, including an English machine translated abstract or claim wherever possible. The update also added Korean utility models and unexamined patent applications back to January 2007. In addition, PatBase announced a plan to add Korean bibliographic data within just a few days of publication, together with an English machine translated abstract (to be replaced by the official English abstract when it is issued). The system also announced plans to begin adding data for the Indian patent collection.

Furthermore, the system announced that many more original language abstracts, along with their English machine translations, have been added to bibliographic records in PatBase. Thousands of original language abstracts in Swedish, Portugese, Spanish, Italian, and Chinese were added to the database, and English machine translations were added for all but the Swedish records. Additionally, the February update included an announcement that unpublished application data from the European Patent Office’s DOCDB file would be included in PatBase, including records of unpublished applications from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Brazil, Australia, Israel and the UK. The purpose of this data is to notify users that applications have been filed, and publications are on their way.

Finally, the release also introduced a new viewer for alerts, new search commands, an “offline” export feature, and the addition of searchable Locarno and German DEKLA classifications (in addition to the US, IPC, ECLA and Japanese F-I/F-term classifications that were available before the update).

May 2007

A May 2007 update added new English-language classification definitions for Japanese F-terms and F-Index classes, to help users search more effectively within the Japanese classification system. The same update also included machine translation tools to convert document text to and from Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Spanish, French German and Portuguese languages.

Sources

1. ↑ Minesoft partners with Gridlogics to launch an integrated IP analytics platform "Minesoft iNSIGHT Pro." PIUG website, http://wiki.piug.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=14483639. Accessed February 19, 2010.
2. ↑ "Software as a service," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_service. Accessed February 19, 2010.
3. ↑ "Patent iNSIGHT Pro Features List." Patent iNSIGHT Pro website, http://www.patentinsightpro.com/features.html. Accessed February 19, 2010.
4. ↑ "Gridlogics in India signs agreement to distribute Minesoft’s patent products." Minesoft press release, http://www.minesoft.com/pressr/INAgent1108.pdf. November 24, 2008.
5. ↑ Patbase representative, via personal e-mail correspondence, received November 10, 2009.
6. ↑ Image from PatBase Enhancements (May 2009). PatBase website, https://www.patbase.com/patbase0509.pdf. Accessed May 4, 2009.