Successful European oppositions (part II) Analysis for the patent information professional

European patents can be opposed within nine months from grant. The result of a successful opposition can be a complete revocation of a granted patent. The main reason for revocation is lack of inventive step (47%). From the patent information perspective, an opposition search against an EU-patent needs, therefore, to be first be focused on inventive step. The EPO has clear guidelines on how prior art can be used to attack the inventive step and how it is used during examination. Following the Problem-Solution-Approach used by the EPO, an opposition search should follow the same steps.     

The rigour of EPO’s patentability criteria: An insight into the “induced withdrawals”

The EPO traditionally grants at least 60% of all patent applications, the rest being either withdrawn (30–35%) or refused (5%). This paper provides quantitative evidence suggesting that up to 54% of all patent withdrawals could be considered as induced by the work of EPO examiners, and hence may be taken as a more appropriate indicator of the rigour of the EPO. “Induced withdrawals” and refusals occur for up to 23% of all applications at the EPO. This share varies according to (1) the route chosen for an EPO filing; (2) the technological field that is considered; and (3) the country of residence of the assignee. The number of claims only slightly affects the share of withdrawals. However, on average, two additional claims induce an additional communication from the EPO, which in turn prolongs the procedural duration by an additional year.     

The technical information provided by the European Patent Office

The search documentation of the European Patent Office at the Hague is essentially used in view of the tasks carried out within the framework of the European Patent Convention and the PCT and also for the preparation of search reports with respect to national applications filed in France, The Netherlands, Switzerland and Turkey. Moreover the general public can indirectly benefit from this search documentation through the standard or special search services. The standard searches are carried out on the basis of granted patents or patent applications (published or not) in compliance with the guidelines established for the European searches; the standard search report is identical to the European search report. The special services of the EPO encompass searches on: the state of the art, infringement, inventories, monographs, designed to respond to a great variety of needs.In the near future, the EPO will provide a direct access to its technical information through EURONET.     

The future of search in the European patent system

The problems facing the EPO in searching its huge documentation are discussed and the new approach being adopted to apply automation to the search are outlined. Arising from this automation, new possibilities will emerge for the improvement of dissemination of patent information.     

Modelling a maintenance management framework based on PAS 55 standard

This article shows the process of modelling a reference maintenance management framework (MMF) that represents the general requirements of the asset management specification PAS 55. The modelled MMF is expressed using the standardized and publicly available Business Process Modelling (BPM) languages UML 2.1 (Unified Modelling Language) and BPMN 1.0 (BPM Notation). The features of these notations allow to easily integrate the modelled processes into the general information system of an organization and to create a flexible structure that can be quickly and even automatically adapted to new necessities. This article presents a brief review about the usage of UML in maintenance projects, general characteristics of PAS 55, modelling concepts and their applications in the project of modelling the MMF. The arguments underlying the methodology and the choice of UML and BPMN are exposed. The general architecture of the suggested MMF is described and modelled through diagrams elucidating the general operation of PAS 55. From this development is appreciated the operation structure of a software tool that can incorporate MIMOSA standards and that can be made suitable for e‐maintenance functions, as an alternative to the commercial systems. Finally, some conclusions about the modelled framework are presented. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The patent system in Singapore

Patent protection in Singapore was formerly only available by obtaining a UK patent grant and then registering the grant in Singapore. The patent system that was implemented in 1995, and has replaced the former procedure, is described here. Applicants can request search and examination, in which case the work is outsourced to the Austrian or Australian patent offices. Alternatively applicants can submit the results of the corresponding search and examination reports carried out by a prescribed office (the patent offices of Australia, Japan¹, New Zealand, UK, USA, Canada (This only applies to Canadian patent applications filed when in English.) and the EPO (This only applies to European patent applications filed when in English.)). A mixed mode of relying on a search from a prescribed office or under the Patent Co-operation Treaty, followed by filing a request for examination, is also possible. The ePatents system, currently providing online Singapore patent register, database, renewal and address updating facilities, is summarised, as is SurfIP, an online service providing a patent search covering many databases and countries, IP management tools, and facilities to assist the commercialization of IP.     

Patent claim generation by fine-tuning OpenAI GPT-2

In this work, we focus on fine-tuning an OpenAI GPT-2 pre-trained model for generating patent claims. GPT-2 has demonstrated impressive efficacy of pre-trained language models on various tasks, particularly coherent text generation. Patent claim language itself has rarely been explored in the past and poses a unique challenge. We are motivated to generate coherent patent claims automatically so that augmented inventing might be viable someday. In our implementation, we identified a unique language structure in patent claims and leveraged its implicit human annotations. We investigated the fine-tuning process by probing the first 100 steps and observing the generated text at each step. Based on both conditional and unconditional random sampling, we analyze the overall quality of generated patent claims. Our contributions include: (1) being the first to generate patent claims by machines and being the first to apply GPT-2 to patent claim generation, (2) providing various experiment results for qualitative analysis and future research, (3) proposing a new sampling approach for text generation, and (4) publishing our fine-tuned GPT-2 model and sample code for future researchers to run on Colab.     

A guide to efficient keyword, sequence and classification search strategies for biopharmaceutical drug-centric patent landscape searches - A human recombinant insulin patent landscape case study

Searching biopharmaceutical drug-related patent information is generally considered to be challenging. In particular, setting up efficient search strategies for comprehensive retrieval of high amounts of patent documents related to processes and methods of use, that achieve a reasonable level of precision, but still remain within a particular search scope. While it is generally accepted that patent information cannot be searched using standardized approaches, it is desirable to have a basic rule set for successful biopharmaceutical drug-related patent information retrieval, particularly facing a steady flow of patent expirations for prominent biologic drugs. The present human recombinant insulin case study shows an assessment of keyword, sequence and classification search strategies for establishing biopharmaceutical drug-centric patent landscapes. The search results of both crude and sophisticated keyword search strategies, as well as of a sequence search strategy, were compared in terms of the key information retrieval quality indicators; the recall and the precision. Through analyses of the relevant retrieved documents, a quality assessment of keyword choice is provided, as well as determining focused IPC and Derwent Manual classification codes and terminology from original patent and Derwent documentation abstract titles. All of which can be used for setting up more efficient search strategies and facilitated document categorization.     

Prioritizing patent sequence search results using annotation-rich data

The European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) provides a free-access sequence search service that combines some of the most comprehensive, annotation-rich resources with a broad range of search and analysis tools. These resources contain patent abstracts, patent chemical compounds, patent sequences and patent equivalents extracted from the EPO, USPTO, JPO and KIPO, in addition to non-patent data. Patent protein and nucleotide sequence data are also available as annotation-enriched non-redundant datasets that clearly display priority dates. Search results are linked to a wide array of specialized databases and, for proteins, functional predictions that add in-depth annotation to help prioritize results when building a claim, without the need to search multiple databases.     

Dissemination of patent information

The four EPO data-bases with bibliographic patent data are described. All four are ON-LINE available for internal needs of the EPO, but so far only the European patent (application) register data base is available ON-LINE externally through EURONET. Several problems arising in providing external ON-LINE access to the other three data bases, as desired by the users,are set forth, and the views of the European Patent Office are presented. To provide solutions for these problems a special Working Group has been set up by the Administrative Council of the EPO, which will decide upon the matter in a future meeting.     

Innovative Output,Productivity and Profitability. A Test Comparing USPTO and EPO Data

The aim of this paper is to test whether patent‐based indicators are still reliable measures of innovativeness in light of organizational changes in the field of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protection and the regulatory reforms already occurred and under way, respectively, at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the European Patent Office (EPO). For most high‐tech industries, patents represent an outcome of the production process and their number can be taken as a proxy for a firm's ability to improve its productivity growth and profitability. The case study reported here concerns the biotechnology industry in Italy, whose firms, by definition, have Intellectual Property (IP) activities in their portfolios. For this purpose, we use a unique dataset which collects balance sheet items and patent information from EPO and USPTO. After linking firms' financial and production data with the patent information, we estimate a modified knowledge production function in which the dependent variable is alternatively (labor) productivity growth and profitability. Although based on a quite small sample, our findings provide some indication of a statistically significant relationship between patents with the EPO and both productivity growth and, in particular, profitability. This suggests that firms might pursue different strategies when patenting with the USPTO and the EPO.     

The EPO search documentation in the face of software related inventions

Software related inventions being not simply excluded from patenting — as confirmed by the recent amendments of the EPO Guidelines — the question arises whether DG1 should adapt its search documentation in order to enable such inventions to be properly searched.As a matter of fact, the question concerns only the non-patent literature (NPL), mostly articles from journals and conference proceedings, because these documents are only selectively classified for inclusion in the search documentation — whereas patent documents are all systematically classified and included — and besides, software matters are rarely dealt with in the present patent literature. In view of the foregoing, the paper illustrates the importance of non-patent literature for search purposes and considers the selection criteria for articles and for the collection of technical journals.     

A simple and robust Monte Carlo hybrid local search algorithm for the facility location problem

In this article, a new Monte Carlo hybrid local search algorithm (Hyb-LS) is proposed for solving the uncapacitated facility location problem. Hyb-LS is based on repeated sampling using two local search strategies based on best improvement and randomized neighbourhood search. A major advantage of Hyb-LS for its practical use is that the number of restarts is its only parameter to tune. The algorithm is also simple to reimplement, scalable and robust to changes in coefficients within a problem instance. The stopping criterion for local search is learned automatically. Experimental results are presented for four representative and contrasting cost and distance models. The results obtained by Hyb-LS are compared to the optimal or near-optimal solutions found by a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) solver with a generous time limit. For three out of the four models, Hyb-LS obtains better solutions than the upper bound found by the MILP solver for at least one instance.     

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.     

EPOS: A linguistic tool for full text search

EPOS (EPO Synonyms) is a system being devised by the EPO as a full text search tool to assist the examiner in querying databases. If an examiner knows one word expressing his field of interest, EPOS delivers to him all the ECLA (EPO classification) groups where this basic term is considered relevant. The examiner then selects the right words appropriate to the desired search query.     

A comparison of official abstracts and enhanced abstracts for patent search

The official abstracts published together with many patent applications are freely available for search, e.g. using patent office websites such as Espacenet or search engines. Some service providers also offer, for a price, their own enhanced abstracts of patent applications. The authors propose a way of making an objective comparison between searching using the official abstracts and using the enhanced abstracts. The advantages offered by enhanced abstracts will be explained and include simple benefits such as saving time in finding the relevant prior art, and more intricate ones such as better suitability for ranking techniques.     

Methods of ranking search results for searches based on multiple search concepts carried out in multiple databases

If a patent prior art search produces several hundred results, it can be annoying when the best document turns out to be the last one. Ideally the most relevant search result should be brought to the top of the list. This article discusses the particular problems which searches for multiple concepts entail, explains what ranking is and compares some ways to rank, or reorder, search results. In particular, the article deals with a special technique which examiners at the European Patent Office (EPO) can use and which has been found to work well, especially when there are several search concepts and several technical fields to be searched. This ranking technique, called Horváth–Materne ranking or pivot ranking, is based on the assumption that the best documents will not only mention the search concepts in full-text databases, but will also mention at least some of the concepts in corresponding abstract databases. The more concepts present in the abstracts, the greater the probability that the document is relevant. In principle the technique could be used to rank results in any database where both full-text and abstracts are available. The technique can be broadened by including an automatic concept extraction.     

Patent information in a changing world: Perspectives from a major patent office

The patent information field is in a state of flux, caused by new tools and changing habits and philosophies. In this article a number of major issues arising from this situation are discussed, some ways in which the EPO is responding are described, and some ideas on future developments provided.Patents are increasingly rated as valuable assets, but is patent information, and especially bibliographic patent information, being treated with the same meticulousness as in the past? More people are searching than ever before. But are they squeezing out the information professional? What effect will the IPC reform, the arrival of XML and other developments have? By focussing on completeness, timeliness and correctness, can patent offices make a contribution to alleviate the situation?The author concludes that, more than ever before, it is important that expert patent information professionals ensure that their views and needs are communicated to both initial data suppliers, mainly patent offices, and to commercial database suppliers and hosts.     

When is a search not a search? Part 3 – The worst of the worst: When complex applications also lack unity

Complex Applications are often difficult for patent examiners to search comprehensively due to problems relating to Articles 83 and 84 of the EPC. Non-Unity occurs when there is no single general inventive concept in an application (Article 82, EPC). But what does an examiner do when his application contains both? This article explores the particular problems and possible solutions when an application is both complex and lacking unity, and also notes that the streamlined EPO procedure can deal with these more effectively.Whilst the article comments on EPO procedure, it is the opinion of the authors alone and is not an official EPO view.