Blockchain patent landscaping: An expert based methodology and search query

The present study is concerned with the emergence of Blockchain related technologies in terms of patenting activity. Blockchain has captured the attention of the public and research has intensified in this field over the last few years, making it a highly interesting topic of study for a patent analysis in order to obtain insight into the developments of this emerging technology. In this paper we present a unique methodology and exhaustive search strategy for identifying Blockchain patent documents by using a combination of specific keywords and patent classifications. This query was built in cooperation with subject matter experts of the European Patent Office (EPO). Our keyword set was then analysed by relevance and was prioritised. The set of specific relevant patent classifications was furthermore combined with keywords in order to exclude false positives. With our methodology we present an exhaustive query for retrieving a highly relevant dataset of Blockchain related patents, extracted from the EPO databases that can be used for patent landscaping exercises or any other bibliometric analysis. In a case study we applied the search strategy to analyse worldwide Blockchain patenting from 2008 till 2018. The results are presented in this paper.     

A survey on deep learning for patent analysis

Patent document collections are an immense source of knowledge for research and innovation communities worldwide. The rapid growth of the number of patent documents poses an enormous challenge for retrieving and analyzing information from this source in an effective manner. Based on deep learning methods for natural language processing, novel approaches have been developed in the field of patent analysis. The goal of these approaches is to reduce costs by automating tasks that previously only domain experts could solve. In this article, we provide a comprehensive survey of the application of deep learning for patent analysis. We summarize the state-of-the-art techniques and describe how they are applied to various tasks in the patent domain. In a detailed discussion, we categorize 40 papers based on the dataset, the representation, and the deep learning architecture that were used, as well as the patent analysis task that was targeted. With our survey, we aim to foster future research at the intersection of patent analysis and deep learning and we conclude by listing promising paths for future work.     

Legal Validity Metrics for Patent Offices and Law Firms – Recycling of Patent Court Appeal Decisions for Quality Management

In all relevant patent systems an adversely affected party has the possibility to appeal the patent office's decision in front of a patent court or Board of Appeal (BoA). Within a European context, the EPO is, in a way, even engaging in de facto competition with national patent offices. As an example, the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA) provides quasi identical patent products and offers the same kind of legal recourse to the German patent court (BPatGer) for these products. Both offices offer an opposition procedure which is open for appeal, and also in the case of a refusal, both offices offer the possibility of appeals. Thus, the EPO Boards of Appeal are engaged in making decisions every year on around 2000 cases and, e.g., the BPatGer on 600 cases regarding the legal validity of the first instance's work. It is thus remarkable that, so far, nobody has systematically included the work of the patent courts in a statistical legal validity evaluation in the context of the Patent & Trademark Offices' (PTOs') quality assurance systems.Since there is obviously a need to establish a common standard for the comparison of first and second instance legal teachings in patent law, a methodology for comparative legal validity analysis is proposed in this paper. I have tested and optimised the approach while working as a project manager at the European Patent Office, based on analysis of 2300 appeal decisions from seven annual batches.     

Impact of the new Spanish patent Act in patent information

The new Spanish Patent Act ("Law 24/2015, of July 24, on Patents") was passed by the Spanish Parliament in July 2015, but did not enter into force until 1st. April 2017. Among other important changes in comparison with the previous 1986 Act, the new regulation stablishes a single granting procedure with substantive examination for every patent application. Regarding patent information, some new document kind codes have been created in order to cope with the additional procedures provided for in the new Act. On the other hand, as a consequence of the implementation of substantive examination, the new Act seems to have fostered the use of patent information services as a means to ensure in advance the novelty and inventiveness of the patent applications. This communication informs about both the new types of Spanish patent documents and the apparent surge in the use of patent information services in Spain as a consequence of the implementation of the new regulation.     

Examining the trajectory of a standard for patent classification: An institutional account of a technical cooperation between EPO and USPTO

This paper explores the dynamics of standardization practices associated with patent classification and discusses the technical, legal and policy implications of standard-setting for patent classification. Therefore, this paper aims to fill a gap in the literature on knowledge management, based on an analysis of the development and implementation of Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC). This paper examines the processes of developing a standard for classifying patent applications from the perspective of Actor-Network Theory (ANT). Our findings reveal that standardization in the context of patent classification is primarily shaped by the interaction involving patent offices that belong to the IP5 group. Furthermore, we found evidence that the CPC standard can be regarded as a response to the demands posed by innovative firms requiring accurate patent classification to provide secure protection for their new technologies.     

Impacts of patent information on clustering in Derwent Innovation's ThemeScape map

ThemeScape Map (Clarivate Analytics, n.d.) is a data analytics tool provided by Derwent Innovation. It is used by patent researchers and R&D experts to generate quick patent intelligence (HG Insights, 2020). It is a general practice that users plot the map by using the default settings recommended by Derwent Innovation, but this default setting may not yield the most optimized results as desired. In this paper, the author contributes to the empirical study on the impacts of the combination of the different types of patent information to be used in ThemeScape Map when clustering patent data. As a result, this paper recommends patent analysts to include Patent Classification and DWPI data when plotting ThemeScape Map in order to achieve more optimized results.     

Construction and validation of an ontology-based technology function matrix: Technology mining of cyber physical system patent portfolios

This research develops a computer-supported ontology-based Technology Function Matrix (TFM) construction method, called eTFM, as an approach to reduce technology mining man-power and enhance the accuracy and consistency of patent analysis results. The paper addresses a rarely discussed issue of the TFM validation. The proposed validation approach compares the TFMs construction based on both on the domain ontology and the International Patent Classification (IPC) classes. The research demonstrates the methodology's practical applications using the patent analysis case of cyber physical system (CPS), an essential core technology enabling advanced manufacturing and Industry 4.0.     

Survey of the information services of the library of the German patent office

The library of the German Patent Office which is among the latgest libraries in Germany, serves both as internal library for the Patent Office and the Federal Patent Court and as a public library.This article describes both the library's holdings of patent documents and technical literature and the various searching aids placed at the disposal of the users.     

Are patent trade wars impeding innovation and development?

When patents support anti-competitive conduct, innovation can be damaged not only by lack of market access but by the prohibitive costs of litigation. The creation of patent barriers is inconsistent with IP protection and enforcement agreed upon under the World Trade Organization and trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (‘TRIPS’). The study uses the US Apple v HTC IP legal case to investigate anti-competitive market behavior and trade barriers. The research provides a formal patent analytic methodology and the case analysis result. The research method tests whether patent conflicts and technical trade barriers are significantly encouraged by existing IP laws.     

The evolution of patent mining: Applying bibliometrics analysis and keyword network analysis

Text mining methods allow researchers to investigate technical documents (tech mining) and specifically explore patents for valuable information (patent mining. To the review literature and analyze the evolution of patent analysis and patent mining methods, bibliometrics analysis and keyword-based network analysis is applied on 143 papers extracted from the 'Web of science' database. Bibliometrics analysis was applied to determine top players researching in patent mining. Applying cluster analysis on the keyword network shows three main stages of patent analysis evolution. Also, it is discussed how patent mining is evolutionized in terms of information retrieval, pattern recognition and pattern analysis.     

The Canadian Patent Examiner Continuous Training Program

The Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) is the Government of Canada organization responsible for granting patent rights. In 2009, the Patent Branch formalized the continuous training and professional development of patent examiners by creating the Patent Examiner Continuous Training Program. This paper presents an overview of the program: factors that influence training needs, categories of training offered, training providers, training medium used and also examples of recent training activities. CIPO's experience may be useful for other intellectual property offices developing a training program for their examiners.     

A proposed framework for the certification of the patent information professional

Gone are the days of exclusive access to esoteric patent information databases or rummaging through a classification box of patent publications in order to identify prior art. Patent information is now widely and freely available to all. Although the availability of patent information will likely facilitate future innovation, the access is resulting in a wide range of skills and competencies among those who search and interpret patent information. The time has come to standardise these skills and to devise a certification scheme so that the art of patent searching and analysis is entrenched as a profession for many years to come. This article reviews the progress towards such a scheme, and explains the current PIUG proposal, a key element of which is a three tiered examination structure.     

Searching the Patent Space

The Patent Space is a model to explain different kinds of patent searches in an illustrative and comprehensible way to laymen in the field of patents and patent searches, e.g. to customers like R + D staff or members of the Board. The most important kinds of patent searches are shown as examples of the applications of the ‘Patent Space’ concept.     

Measuring patent quality: A claim and search report approach

This paper presents a new prospective metric for assessing the novelty and inventiveness of patents. It does this by using initial patent search reports and examiner's intuition about the impact of adverse citations on patent claim survival. The paper then demonstrates the metric by evaluating the quality of Switzerland's national patent stock using a selection model, finding that between 84 and 90% of the country's national patents would likely not survive examination at the European Patent Office. In doing so, it contributes to the larger literature on patent assessment, underscores the relevance of patent strategy in the observed characteristics of patents, and removes some of the ambiguity in the academic literature about backward citations.     

Design Patent Map: An Innovative Measure for Corporative Design Strategies

Abstract:

The design patent map is one of the essential strategic measures for formulating design strategies. Because the design patent is considered less definite than other patent categories, it is relatively difficult to create a design patent map. No study has been discovered in a worldwide search of patent documents or publications that is relevant to design patent maps, proving the innovative nature of this study. The authors have extracted 96 representative works for bicycle frame design patents that were published from 1992 to 2003 and have used them as the study samples. To ensure precise interpretation of the technical data of bicycle frames and to create the design patent map, the authors have interviewed 11 design patent examiners who have an average of 10 years of experience in patent examination, and are currently working in the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office. Based on the matrix for the available patenting capability and the degree of need for patents, the authors have further converted the design patent map into nine feasibly specific design strategies: (1) overall seizure, (2) expansion, (3) closing-in, (4) envelopment, (5) dispersion, (6) pincer attack, (7) division, (8) deviation, and (9) abandonment. As a result, enterprises will be able to employ the design patent map developed in this study to customize their own design strategies. Such a strategic measure will soon become a new competitive edge for enterprises with the arrival of the knowledge economy era.     

US Alien Property Custodian patent documents: A legacy prior art collection from World War II – Part 1. History

In 1943, at the height of World War II, the US Patent Office, by the authorization of the Alien Property Custodian (APC), published 2964 pending patent applications that had been seized from nationals of enemy and enemy-occupied countries. This unusual act – only in 2001 did the USPTO begin routinely publishing some pending patent applications – was prompted by the APC’s wartime mandate to make enemy technology available to American industry. During and after the war many of these applications were issued as patents assigned to the APC. However, up to 58% were abandoned, becoming, in effect, orphan documents. APC documents, although they resemble contemporary patents and are granted prior art status by the USPTO, are virtually unknown today, even among patent professionals. This two-part paper investigates the origins, history and profile of this unique collection of prior art documents. Part one reviews the wartime organization and activities of the Office of the Alien Property Custodian, the agency responsible for the creation of APC documents, the use of vesting orders to seize patents and the APC’s patent portfolio. Part two describes applications published by the APC, their national and technological profiles, and snapshots of the inventors and companies who lost and, in some cases, regained their patent rights.     

Patent information from the Polish Patent Office

The Polish Patent Office activity within the scope of its patent information policy—with emphasis on the changes since the 1990s—is described. In addition to aspects of patent searching, such as documentation and databases, dissemination activities, for example education and training, and the role of Patent Information Centres, is covered. New challenges associated with the promotion of intellectual property protection and its role for the economy are also highlighted.     

Use of patents as a tool to map the technological development involving the hydrogen economy

The use of fossil fuels favors the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG). With that in mind, there is a growing need to find sustainable energy options for the transport sector. Hydrogen appears as a potential substitute for fossil fuels. In this way, the objective of this study is to map the hydrogen economy through the patent consultation in the period 1998–2018. The documents found were tabulated in order to characterize the technological advance over the 1998–2018, showing countries that publish and priority patents and the major assignees. This time range was chosen due to the fact that prior to 1998 the number of patents for these technologies was not significant. The searches were conducted on the Questel Orbit platform. Data were filtered using some keywords and the International Patent Classification (IPC). The results show that Japan and United States are the countries with the highest number of patent families by priority. This fact indicates that there are expressive efforts for the technological advance, thus contributing, to be the countries that stand out in these technologies. This research shows that the assignees with the highest number of patents families by priority are Toyota Motor and Honda Motor.