Final Report Summary - IPATDOC (Workbench for Interactive Contrastive Analysis of Patent Documentation)
Executive Summary:
Effective intellectual property protection needs adequate instruments. The first of these instruments is a patent search engine that ensures that all patent documentation relevant to a given patent or patent application is retrieved for examination. The support of targeted patent search has increasingly been topic of research (including ECfunded research; cf. ePatent EDC-22007, WISPER IST 2001-34407, PATExpert FP6-ICT-028116) and industrial development (cf., e.g. Thomson Scientific, Questel Orbit, Juve, STN, and PatAnalyse) – with a very significant outcome. But search is just the first stage that provides the “raw” material that is to be digested, assessed with respect to its relevance to the user and compared with the user’s reference material. Due to the potentially wide-reaching consequences when a relevant patent remains undiscovered during search, patent search traditionally aims at high recall at the cost of lower precision, such that this raw material tends to contain many more irrelevant hits than one would assume – with the consequence that patent specialists have to review large quantities of patents in each phase of the search procedure. Therefore, a second instrument is needed: an interactive contrastive content analysis engine (i) that ensures that the user receives the most prominent content features of selected patent (applications) and the most prominent content similarities and differences between identified patents, and (ii) that is fully trusted by the user.
The overall goal of iPatDoc was the development of such an instrument. More precisely, iPatDoc successfully targeted the development of new innovative technologies for interactive inspection and contrastive analysis of patent material with respect to its content as well as with respect to specific meta features (such as time line, applicants, etc.). The distinctive characteristic of these technologies is that they rely on deep linguistic analysis and ontological representation of the content of this material and use advanced interactive visualization techniques. The deep analysis facilitates the detection of the components of an invention, of the properties of the components, and of the relations between components. The ontological representation in terms of conceptual maps allows for a content-oriented view on an invention and its contrast with other inventions. The interactive visualization supports the user in their exploration of the (content of) patent material, leading to a better comprehension and thus also satisfaction. The positive feedback received during the evaluation runs of the technologies and during the Open User Day organized by the Consortium confirms the overall success of iPatDoc.
Project Context and Objectives:
Effective intellectual property protection needs adequate instruments. The first of these instruments is a patent search engine that ensures that all patent documentation relevant to a given patent or patent application is retrieved for examination. The support of targeted patent search has increasingly been topic of research (including EC funded research; cf. ePatent EDC-22007, WISPER IST 2001-34407, PATExpert FP6-ICT-028116) and industrial development (cf., e.g. Thomson Scientific, Questel Orbit, Juve, STN, and PatAnalyse) – with a very significant outcome. But search is just the first stage that provides the “raw” material that is to be digested, assessed with respect to its relevance to the user and compared with the user’s reference material. Due to the potentially wide-reaching consequences when a relevant patent remains undiscovered during search, patent search traditionally aims at high recall at the cost of lower precision, such that this raw material tends to contain many more irrelevant hits than one would assume – with the consequence that patent specialists have to review large quantities of patents in each phase of the search procedure. Therefore, a second instrument is needed: an interactive contrastive content analysis engine that (i) ensures that the user receives the most prominent content features of selected patent (applications) and the most prominent content similarities and differences between identified patents, and (ii) is fully trusted by the user. The first requirement can be only achieved by deep linguistic analysis that reliably identifies the components of an invention, their properties and their relations and that thus provides for an ontologically-motivated representation of the content of an invention in terms of conceptual maps that can be explored and contrasted. The second requirement can be only achieved if this exploration and contrastive look-up is realized in terms of advanced interactive visualization techniques that ensure that it is the user who is in control of the exploration procedure and that the display of information is adequate for the type of information displayed.
To address the development of the corresponding techniques, iPatDoc pursued a number of innovative and technological objectives. These objectives were furthermore complemented by several strategic goals that sought to strengthen the SMEs involved in iPatDoc in their respective market niches.
iPATDoc had the following six innovative objectives:
o to provide advanced interactive visualization techniques that facilitate the (contrastive) exploration of the content and meta characteristics of a patent or a collection of patents;
o to develop technologies for the automatic recognition and extraction of components of an invention, their properties and composition and functional interrelations among them;
o to develop technologies for automatic clustering of components, component properties and component interrelations;
o to develop a technique for construction of a hierarchical conceptual map of a patent;
o to develop technologies for contrastive examination of the content of two patents;
o to develop technologies for distribution analyses across patent collections – for instance, temporal, geographic or thematic.
To complement the innovative objectives, iPATDoc had furthermore the following five technological objectives:
o to integrate the technologies developed in iPATDoc into an interactive patent documentation analysis platform that can be brought by the SMEs of the Consortium to maturity as a stand-alone product;
o to extend the product lines of the SMEs involved in iPATDoc by individual technologies developed in iPATDoc.
o to contribute to a significant increase of the efficiency of the technical and IPR consultancy SMEs in the Consortium in terms of the consumption of time and external resources for a signal business mission carried out on behalf of a client.
o to involve a subset of the current clients of the SMEs of the Consortium into the testing and evaluation activities of the project and thus receive direct feedback from the clients on the usefulness and possible amelioration of the technologies under development;
o to promote the use of the iPATDoc technologies by current clients of the SMEs and facilitate the acquisition of new clients whose needs are addressed by the iPATDoc technologies for SMEs involved in iPATDoc and the conquest of new market niches.
And, finally, to strengthen the role of its SMEs, iPATDoc pursued some strategic goals:
o to ensure the exploitation of the research outcome of the project by its taking up and bringing to maturity by the SMEs;
o to extend the market for the Consortium’s SMEs;
o to extend the business network of the SMEs involved in iPATDoc;
o to contribute to the increase of the visibility of the SMEs involved in iPATDoc via the dissemination activities of the intermediate and final results of the project among the primary professional bodies in the field;
o to facilitate efficient management and exploitation of intellectual property acquired within iPATDoc and acquisition of additional technical know-how and research skills by the Consortium’s SMEs.
In the following sections, we outline how the iPATDoc Consortium achieved its objectives in that we outline the main innovative and technological achievements within the lifetime of the project, discuss the potential impact of these achievements (both for SMEs and in general), and discuss the carried out and still ongoing dissemination and exploitation activities.
Project Results:
see attached document
Potential Impact:
see attached document
List of Websites:
Sören Brügmann, Brügmann Software GmbH, Bokeler Straße 18, 26871 Papenburg, Germany
Wolfgang Berres, Altracon s.a. 56, rue de la gare. L-6440 Echternach, Luxembourg
Victor Zhitomirsky, PatAnalyse Ltd, 77A Shelford Road, Cambridge, CB2 9NB, UK
Effective intellectual property protection needs adequate instruments. The first of these instruments is a patent search engine that ensures that all patent documentation relevant to a given patent or patent application is retrieved for examination. The support of targeted patent search has increasingly been topic of research (including ECfunded research; cf. ePatent EDC-22007, WISPER IST 2001-34407, PATExpert FP6-ICT-028116) and industrial development (cf., e.g. Thomson Scientific, Questel Orbit, Juve, STN, and PatAnalyse) – with a very significant outcome. But search is just the first stage that provides the “raw” material that is to be digested, assessed with respect to its relevance to the user and compared with the user’s reference material. Due to the potentially wide-reaching consequences when a relevant patent remains undiscovered during search, patent search traditionally aims at high recall at the cost of lower precision, such that this raw material tends to contain many more irrelevant hits than one would assume – with the consequence that patent specialists have to review large quantities of patents in each phase of the search procedure. Therefore, a second instrument is needed: an interactive contrastive content analysis engine (i) that ensures that the user receives the most prominent content features of selected patent (applications) and the most prominent content similarities and differences between identified patents, and (ii) that is fully trusted by the user.
The overall goal of iPatDoc was the development of such an instrument. More precisely, iPatDoc successfully targeted the development of new innovative technologies for interactive inspection and contrastive analysis of patent material with respect to its content as well as with respect to specific meta features (such as time line, applicants, etc.). The distinctive characteristic of these technologies is that they rely on deep linguistic analysis and ontological representation of the content of this material and use advanced interactive visualization techniques. The deep analysis facilitates the detection of the components of an invention, of the properties of the components, and of the relations between components. The ontological representation in terms of conceptual maps allows for a content-oriented view on an invention and its contrast with other inventions. The interactive visualization supports the user in their exploration of the (content of) patent material, leading to a better comprehension and thus also satisfaction. The positive feedback received during the evaluation runs of the technologies and during the Open User Day organized by the Consortium confirms the overall success of iPatDoc.
Project Context and Objectives:
Effective intellectual property protection needs adequate instruments. The first of these instruments is a patent search engine that ensures that all patent documentation relevant to a given patent or patent application is retrieved for examination. The support of targeted patent search has increasingly been topic of research (including EC funded research; cf. ePatent EDC-22007, WISPER IST 2001-34407, PATExpert FP6-ICT-028116) and industrial development (cf., e.g. Thomson Scientific, Questel Orbit, Juve, STN, and PatAnalyse) – with a very significant outcome. But search is just the first stage that provides the “raw” material that is to be digested, assessed with respect to its relevance to the user and compared with the user’s reference material. Due to the potentially wide-reaching consequences when a relevant patent remains undiscovered during search, patent search traditionally aims at high recall at the cost of lower precision, such that this raw material tends to contain many more irrelevant hits than one would assume – with the consequence that patent specialists have to review large quantities of patents in each phase of the search procedure. Therefore, a second instrument is needed: an interactive contrastive content analysis engine that (i) ensures that the user receives the most prominent content features of selected patent (applications) and the most prominent content similarities and differences between identified patents, and (ii) is fully trusted by the user. The first requirement can be only achieved by deep linguistic analysis that reliably identifies the components of an invention, their properties and their relations and that thus provides for an ontologically-motivated representation of the content of an invention in terms of conceptual maps that can be explored and contrasted. The second requirement can be only achieved if this exploration and contrastive look-up is realized in terms of advanced interactive visualization techniques that ensure that it is the user who is in control of the exploration procedure and that the display of information is adequate for the type of information displayed.
To address the development of the corresponding techniques, iPatDoc pursued a number of innovative and technological objectives. These objectives were furthermore complemented by several strategic goals that sought to strengthen the SMEs involved in iPatDoc in their respective market niches.
iPATDoc had the following six innovative objectives:
o to provide advanced interactive visualization techniques that facilitate the (contrastive) exploration of the content and meta characteristics of a patent or a collection of patents;
o to develop technologies for the automatic recognition and extraction of components of an invention, their properties and composition and functional interrelations among them;
o to develop technologies for automatic clustering of components, component properties and component interrelations;
o to develop a technique for construction of a hierarchical conceptual map of a patent;
o to develop technologies for contrastive examination of the content of two patents;
o to develop technologies for distribution analyses across patent collections – for instance, temporal, geographic or thematic.
To complement the innovative objectives, iPATDoc had furthermore the following five technological objectives:
o to integrate the technologies developed in iPATDoc into an interactive patent documentation analysis platform that can be brought by the SMEs of the Consortium to maturity as a stand-alone product;
o to extend the product lines of the SMEs involved in iPATDoc by individual technologies developed in iPATDoc.
o to contribute to a significant increase of the efficiency of the technical and IPR consultancy SMEs in the Consortium in terms of the consumption of time and external resources for a signal business mission carried out on behalf of a client.
o to involve a subset of the current clients of the SMEs of the Consortium into the testing and evaluation activities of the project and thus receive direct feedback from the clients on the usefulness and possible amelioration of the technologies under development;
o to promote the use of the iPATDoc technologies by current clients of the SMEs and facilitate the acquisition of new clients whose needs are addressed by the iPATDoc technologies for SMEs involved in iPATDoc and the conquest of new market niches.
And, finally, to strengthen the role of its SMEs, iPATDoc pursued some strategic goals:
o to ensure the exploitation of the research outcome of the project by its taking up and bringing to maturity by the SMEs;
o to extend the market for the Consortium’s SMEs;
o to extend the business network of the SMEs involved in iPATDoc;
o to contribute to the increase of the visibility of the SMEs involved in iPATDoc via the dissemination activities of the intermediate and final results of the project among the primary professional bodies in the field;
o to facilitate efficient management and exploitation of intellectual property acquired within iPATDoc and acquisition of additional technical know-how and research skills by the Consortium’s SMEs.
In the following sections, we outline how the iPATDoc Consortium achieved its objectives in that we outline the main innovative and technological achievements within the lifetime of the project, discuss the potential impact of these achievements (both for SMEs and in general), and discuss the carried out and still ongoing dissemination and exploitation activities.
Project Results:
see attached document
Potential Impact:
see attached document
List of Websites:
Sören Brügmann, Brügmann Software GmbH, Bokeler Straße 18, 26871 Papenburg, Germany
Wolfgang Berres, Altracon s.a. 56, rue de la gare. L-6440 Echternach, Luxembourg
Victor Zhitomirsky, PatAnalyse Ltd, 77A Shelford Road, Cambridge, CB2 9NB, UK