TeamPatent

TeamPatent attended Patent Information Users Group (PIUG) in San Antonio the week of 4May09. PIUG caters primarily to patent searchers as distinct from inventors, prosecutors (i.e. patent attorneys/agents), and litigators. This conference provides a forum for patent content providers to showcase their wares. For example, Thomson, Lexis, Questel, Dialog, FreePatentsOnline, etc described features in their interfaces (all of which appear to be browser-based) and specified their dataset coverage.

Notable features:

• Free: (FreePatentsOnline only?). No explicit discussion of how free info is affecting business models of “high value”-added vendors.
• Human-generated abstracts using consistent terms (Thomson only)
• Patent Families (i.e. equivalent applications filed in various countries are grouped): provided by most paid services
• Assignee normalization (i.e. recognizing that “IBM”=”Int’l Business Machines”, etc): provided by some paid services. Some track company acquisitions/divestitures as well.
• Classification normalization (i.e. tracking initial classification vs. subsequent reclassification, possibly linking different country’s classification systems): provided by some providers.
• Language translation: automatic or human-assisted services.

There were also presentations on:

• US legislation S515 is likely to pass this year which moves from “first to invent” to “first to file”, allows pre-issuance third party submissions, and other changes.
• International trends. For example, Chinese filings are expected to exceed US filings in 2012.

Franklin Pearce Law School described how they teach the practice of searching, preparing, and litigating patent (applications) while most law schools teach “black book” (i.e. teaching the laws but not the practice). We look forward to incorporating our software into their clinics.