From information to inspiration - how patent data can boost innovation
Boosting expertise on patent information across Russia will stimulate competition, innovation and economic growth to the benefit of the whole country, Wolfgang Pilch, Principal Director for patent information at the European Patent Office (EPO), told delegates at a meeting in Moscow on 17 July. The event marked the first step in a joint campaign by the EPO and Rospatent (the Russian Patent Office) to promote the use of patent information as a stimulus of innovation and ideas. An important tool in this work is esp@cenet, the EPO's online database, which provides free access to millions of patent documents from around the world. A Russian language version of the portal has just been launched; the basic interface is already available and operational online, and the Russian version of the training module is expected to go live later this year. Rospatent's involvement in the esp@cenet initiative will also ensure that Russian patents are easily accessible to foreign researchers, thereby raising the country's profile. 'Russia is a great source of science and technology information,' Nina Formby, Project Leader at the EPO for the CIS and Mongolia, told CORDIS News. So what can Russian researchers, or indeed any researchers, gain from accessing patent information? The most obvious answer is that it prevents researchers from re-inventing the wheel by working on an idea that is already patented. On this topic Olivier Eulaerts of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre offered the salutary tale of a researcher who applied for a patent for his technology to remove nitrate from water, only to be told that someone else had already invented the same device some years earlier. A simple search of a patent database at the start of the project would have revealed this fact. 'It was a waste of time and a waste of public money!' said Dr Eulaerts. However, avoiding duplication of research is just one benefit of consulting patent information. 'Patent information is an incredibly valuable asset,' said Eugene Sweeney of Iambic Innovation. 'It has information on technologies, markets, competitors and potential customers.' Companies can use patent information to find commercial opportunities, design their R&D programme, look for new markets and find new partners or licensees. Meanwhile, researchers can quickly find information on the state-of-the-art in their field, identify new research challenges and find other researchers and industrial partners. Furthermore, while analysing patent information may reveal that an idea has already been patented, further digging may reveal gaps that remain unexploited. A number of companies have developed sophisticated software that presents the information contained in patents in an easy-to-understand, visual form. At a basic level, simple graphs can display not only how many patents a company has, but how many of them are lapsed and how many of them are under examination. 'Citation trees' provide a visual representation of who has cited a patent. At a more complex level, patent maps clump similar patents together, with areas of high activity represented as peaks. These can be manipulated to show, for example, which companies are working in which activity areas, an exercise which often throws up some surprises. However, as a demonstration of the esp@cenet service showed, individuals can still obtain relevant, detailed information simply by using the service's search tool wisely. Unfortunately, large numbers of researchers still fail to make use of this valuable source of information. 'Our researchers don't use patent information tools enough, and very often they are doing work without being aware of what is happening in the world,' said Rospatent Director General Boris Simonov. 'This lowers competitiveness.' And how can researchers be encouraged to make greater use of patent information? Many speakers agreed that patents should receive greater weight when researchers' work is evaluated; currently many researchers are evaluated solely on their publications output. Furthermore, funding organisations should request information on the state-of-the-art from funding applicants. Dr Sweeney pointed out that the European Commission now recommends that those applying for EU research funds use esp@cenet to find this information. Another reason to consult patent information is excellence. 'You don't know the potential of your technology unless you know what the patent literature says,' said Peter Cordsen of the Danish Technological Institute. For Wolfgang Pilch, the value of using patent information is clear: 'It costs a lot of money not to use patent information, but it is free to use it,' he said. The EPO and Rospatent first started working together more than a decade ago. Over the years the relationship has deepened and earlier this year the two organisations signed a Memorandum of Understanding which set out the scope of possible future common activities. This conference is the first major event to take place since the MoU was signed.
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