Report:Thomson Innovation/Major Recent Updates

Major Recent Updates

See the Intellogist update policies for more information.

February 2012

A press release on the Thomson Reuters website gives a more detailed description of updates to the Thomson Innovation platform:^[1]

IP professionals, researchers, attorneys, and innovation professionals now have faster access to patent information with accelerated record paging in “Quick View,” which features essential bibliographic information and larger patent drawings. This new feature lets users more effectively screen large amounts of patent data faster, while a “Mark and Next” pagination allows them to quickly flag relevant records.

Additionally, numbered step functionality for key features such as search forms and exporting break complex tasks down into individual components that are easier to understand and perform. A centralized menu bar, more use of tabs, flexible font sizes and larger images of patent drawings offer a cleaner, more modern look for better organization.

Fall 2011

The Thomson Innovation website lists a number of improvements to the search system:^[2]

• A cleaner, more modern interface with better organization
• Numbered step functionality for key features
• New universal menu bars that put functions all in one place
• More use of tabs means less scrolling for the information you need
• The new quick record view gives you fast one-second-per-record paging
• Larger images with immediate access to all drawings
• Better readability with larger text and flexible font sizes
• Faster ways to review and collect records

September 2011

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.

According to the Thomson Innovation website:^[2]

On September 10, 2011, we released enhancements to Thomson Innovation to bring you additional content and functionality designed to improve the quality and coverage of your patent research and increase your workflow efficiencies.

Highlights include:

• NewsRoom from Thomson Reuters – We have greatly enhanced the content and functionality of our Business Information and News with the addition of NewsRoom from Thomson Reuters, which replaces the current News and Product collections. NewsRoom on Thomson Innovation completes your view of the IP landscape by delivering the world's most comprehensive collection of news, business and trade publications alongside the industry's most trusted global patent information and scientific literature. You can now:
  • Search over 3,000 trade journals, 97 of the top 100 U.S. newspapers along with major international newspapers, and more than 8,000 other news sources
  • Integrate your search and retrieval with powerful ThemeScape Maps and Clustering to more quickly focus on items that are critical to your IP research
  • Get the most relevant search results with new and enhanced search fields and search aids, improving the quality of your research and your productivity
• Custom Fields Enhancements – We expanded our industry-leading Custom Fields capability, making it easier for you to integrate your own reviews, classifications and other corporate data with the industry's most trusted global patent information and scientific literature. In addition to fully integrating Custom Fields with all Thomson Innovation tools, the new update lets you:
  • Analyze Custom Field values in Charting, Clustering and Citation Maps, along with global patent data
  • Automatically apply Custom Field values to all records in a DWPI family when a value is added to just one family member
  • Import data from internal company databases into Custom Fields, folder hierarchies and Work Files
  • Utilize colored flags for quick recognition of records with specified values
  • Leverage new field types for even more flexibility, including multi-valued pick lists, check boxes, radio buttons and URLs
• Canadian Full-Text Coverage – Thomson Innovation now includes Canadian full-text patents, giving you a more complete view of the global patent landscape.
• Japanese Language Search – We have enhanced our Japanese-language patent collection with the addition of a 25-year backfile of full-text, providing comprehensive prior art searching of granted patents, applications and utility models.

Planned Future Updates

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 November 2010, Thomson Reuters announced an upcoming Japanese interface. The interface will allow users to search Japanese patents using Japanese language queries. The interface will also include global collections, allowing users to link to Japanese equivalents from global family members of interest, and vice-versa. A search-assist feature will also be available to help with query construction.

More information can be found in the press release, at http://thomsonreuters.com/content/press_room/legal/288688.

November 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.

Thomson Innovation now offers internal tagging and classification features to allow users to build in-house collections categorized based on their internal taxonomies.

More information can be found in the press release, at http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/thomson-reuters-launches-game-changing-intellectual-property-research-functionality-allowing-patent-professionals-to-research-ip-on-their-own-terms-109915974.html

July 2009

An official summary of these features may be found on the Thomson Innovation website, at http://www.thomsoninnovation.com/ti/newfeatures_ti/.

In July of 2009, Thomson Innovation 2.2 was released. The following features were added to the product:

• Full text machine-assisted English translations of Korean applications, granted patents and examined applications, and utility models from January 2008 have been added to the database.
• Users can now search the full text Japanese collections using Japanese File Index (FI) codes and F-terms.
• The citation map feature can now be customized by allowing users to selectively hide nodes on the map. See Citation Mapping for more information about this feature.
• New collaboration features have been added, giving users the flexibility to set sharing permissions at the item or folder level, and allowing users to share saved items within "groups" of users (while retaining the ability to share at the company-wide or individual user levels).

Also in July, Thomson announced a new "combined offering" of Westlaw Patents + Thomson Innovation. Westlaw is a notable research service for legal professionals. More details about Westlaw Patents itself are available on the West website. The official press release is here.

April 2009

An official summary of the new features may be found on the Thomson Innovation website, at http://www.thomsoninnovation.com/ti/newfeatures_ti/.

In April of 2009, Thomson Innovation version 2.1 was released. The new version features:

• The inclusion of full text English machine-assisted translations for Japanese utility models through January 2008.
• An on-the-fly machine translation engine that can support a range of starting and ending languages.
• The ability to link to Thomson Innovation records or PDF copies of patent documents from PDF data exports.
• The ability to view and browse patent drawings in Microsoft Excel spreadsheet format.
• New search options for the Derwent World Patents Index file that allow users to search for basics only, or basics and equivalents. New search options for searching assignee codes, and the ability to search country and kind code within the same field, are also available in the DWPI file.
• Interactive citation mapping for non-patent literature, including timeline views for patent and literature citation maps.
• The ability to search the node text within patent and literature citation maps.

December 2008

In December of 2008, Thomson Innovation version 2.0 was released. The new version includes:

• New hand-translated collections of Chinese patent applications and utility models back to 2007. (See the China section of this article's data coverage section for more information).

• New analysis tools, including:

• Text Clustering, a tool which uses linguistic analysis to group patents into related keyword clusters.
• Themescape maps, which are "topographical" contour maps that visually represent clusters or "peaks" of subject matter over a large patent landscape.

• New account management tools, including:

• The ability to create "profiles" for different user groups
• The ability to control default settings
• The ability to restrict access to pay-per-use transactions, such as downloading file histories
• User ID management tools to automatically delete disabled accounts

See Other Features for more information on these account management tools.

• New alerting feature: the e-mail PDF report format for alerts was made available for business and literature searches (previously could only be used with patent searches). See Alerts for more information.

November 2008

In November 2008, Thomson Reuters announced the release of a new Japanese user interface for Thomson Innovation.

Future Updates

Possible upcoming new features may include literature citation mapping and assigning weighted values to highlighting terms.

Sources

1. ↑ Figueroa, Jennifer and Laura Gaze. "Thomson Innovation Streamlines Workflow and Enables Faster IP Decision Making with New Intuitive User Interface." Thomson Reuters website, http://thomsonreuters.com/content/press_room/science/550187. Accessed April 9, 2012.
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} "What's New in Thomson Innovation." Thomson Innovation website, http://info.thomsoninnovation.com/whatsnew. Accessed March 23, 2012.