News archive

Artificial intelligence is offering many benefits to the intellectual property (IP) industry, but it can’t legally take credit for inventing anything new. A patent application listing an artificial intelligence (AI) entity as the inventor was denied by three major patent offices. Submitted by Dr. Stephen Thaler with the inventor listed as DABUS, the USPTO, the EPO, and the UKIPO, all agreed that current law can’t allow for anything other than “natural persons”.
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Earlier this year, we announced the creation of the Open COVID Pledge. The aim of the group is to remove intellectual property (IP) barriers which could interfere with the development of new diagnostic tests and treatments for the coronavirus. Companies who take the pledge agree to make their IP assets available for free until one year after the World Health Organization declares the pandemic has…

Most businesses now hold the belief that data is a huge asset or even “the new oil”. Yet many still have difficulties with managing quality. In a recent report from O’Reilly titled The State of Data Quality in 2020, one of the main conclusions is that data quality is going to get worse before it gets better. While common problems such as dealing with unifying multiple sources and missing data are still challenges, organizations are starting to adapt data governance policies with C-level…

For small biz, there’s a new fast lane

Many organizations and governments around the world have taken steps to ensure business continuity and address hardships felt by their customers and patrons. Intellectual property offices have largely moved to remote operations in areas where the coronavirus is still problematic. Many organizations want to assist patent owners and applicants facing challenges by extending deadlines for fees and the submission of other required…

Now more than ever, it’s essential to have the most accurate, timely, and comprehensive Chinese data for research and analysis. IFI’s switch to a new supplier allows us to offer new and improved patent data that includes both English translations and the original Chinese text.
 
Chinese patent publications now include all referenced images and pdfs along with bibliographic data and full text.
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Get English translations of patent documents before anyone else and with nearly 100% completeness

Be the first to know when new non-English patent records are published by leveraging the new translation capabilities in CLAIMS Direct. As the only information provider using the Google Translate engine in-house, IFI now offers English translations a day after the native language text is received. The only exception is Chinese, where the English translation is available before the original native language text.…

At IP Service World (IPSW) in Munich held in late November 2019, IFI hosted three brief interactive roundtable sessions and learned more about both the European perspective on artificial intelligence (AI) and new information about its impact to the intellectual property (IP) industry. We had great discussions ranging from whether AI can be considered an inventor on a patent application to whether new machine learning tools are changing IP management workflows.
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Often times senior executives don’t fully understand the wealth of insights that can be extracted by studying the patent portfolio of a competitor. This is traditionally a very time-consuming task for the patent search expert, since growth rates analysis of patent filing activity usually does not come out of a box. But what if it did?

Janice Stevenson, EVP of Client Relations at IFI CLAIMS Patent Services, will present information at the 2019 IP Service World in Munich on where Chinese inventors are filing for patent protection and what forms it is taking.
 

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Lucas von Reuss from Quant IP explains how IFI CLAIMS not only saved time but enabled his employees to be more efficient and sped up product development. We started with raw data from patent offices—a cheap solution every young company looks for instinctively.

A Special Patent Classification

Guest post from Matthias Pötzl, Managing Director, Dennemeyer Octimine

Background

Dennemeyer Octimine is an innovative company in the field of IP management and recognized as one of the leading AI platforms. The product Octimine takes semantic patent search, analytics and machine learning to the next level. Founded in 2015 by former Max-Planck-Institute and LMU Munich researchers Dr. Michael Natterer and Dr.
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New Records
In keeping with our 2019 content roadmap, many new full text records are now available, along with translations to English using Google Translate. Since the beginning of the year 1.4 million documents covering 14 new countries and patent authorities have been added to our global patent database, bringing the total to 38 entities. These records are available to Premium+ subscribers. See more details…

At a sold-out event at MIT in the middle of summer, corporate, academic, and consulting leaders came together to discuss the future of information management. The Chief Data Officer and Information Quality Symposium drew attendees from as far away as South Korea and Austria seeking new strategies for managing opportunities brought about by technologies such as AI and managing critical risks such as securing personal…

We posted a blog in January highlighting some of the things you can do with our Top 1000 Interactive Ranking Tool. In addition to discovering trends and finding competitors, the tool shows the most current counts of patent grants for the year-to-date.
 
Let’s highlight one particular company that has seen a lot of growth over the past few years, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC). In…

Linking patent data to financial and other data sources provides analysts with unique metrics for decision making. On a tactical level, it’s possible to figure out how effective a company’s R&D spend is by linking it to patent grants. When linked to SIC codes, this can be done at an industry level to uncover broader patterns. On a strategic level, tracking patent activity sheds light on technology and geography…

This is a guest blog by Nadav Kenneth (CEO) and Dr. Ronen Golan (CTO) of Inventive-IP, which is based in Israel. Inventive-IP provides patent-related services including prior art search, portfolio evaluation and modeling, competitive landscapes and litigation support. Inventive-IP’s services are supported by their proprietary search and analysis software. 

In this blog, we will use the…

 The Fastest Growing Technologies

Analyzing patent information is a good way to determine which technologies are experiencing rapid growth. We compared US patent application growth by CPC (cooperative patent classification) codes to find the largest increases from 2017 to 2018. The list includes some widely-covered technologies such as machine learning, and also some surprises like warehouse technology.…

When it comes to international patent filings, China has been turning up the heat. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) more than half of all PCT applications, which allow simultaneous filing in many countries, were filed by Asian companies in 2018. China leads the pack, and especially of note are their large numbers of AI and quantum computing patents. They are expected to pass the US in PCT patent applications within the next two years.¹…

In today’s world, many people are accustomed to using apps that can translate signs in other languages by simply aiming their camera. While this is a great tool for vacationers, a vastly more sophisticated tool is needed for legal documents such as patents. The IFI global patent database contains records in 48 languages, and we're committed to making the information stored in them as accessible as…

A subset of IFI patent data is now available for research purposes in conjunction with the World Patent Information (WPI) journal. The collection supports the mission of WPI, which is to publish insights into intellectual property information retrieval along with patent analytics methods.
 
This free collection is designed to foster good scientific practice, such as transparency and repeatability of experiments. It will not be updated with new data to ensure consistency of…

Larry Cady, Senior Analyst, IFI CLAIMS Patent Services
Capitola resident Larry Cady is not a patent attorney but does have over 20 years experience working with an analyzing patent data and trends. 

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IFI's Content Roadmap for 2019 reinforces the company’s ongoing commitment to the quality, reliability, and completeness of the CLAIMS Direct patent repository.
 
Chinese Data Improvements
 
We’ve just started to use a new Chinese data source that is improving quality and timeliness. We are using this new source for all new publications and updates, and during Q1 and Q2 we will complete a…

If you’re looking for an easy way to do simple patent research, our new Top 1000 Interactive tool is the perfect place to start. Based on the top 1000 companies who received US patent grants in 2018, you can search, sort, filter, and generate charts to make your own discoveries. Draw upon the examples below as a starting point.
 
Search for a Company
 
Using Siemens as an example, we typed the…

This analysis of blockchain patent applications and grants from IALE Tecnología, based on IFI data, offers an in-depth examination of this new technology. 
 

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It can be a challenge to stay on top of the patent assets of large companies with many subsidiaries. It’s easy to overlook the true impact of a particular organization if you’re unaware of its holdings and what the combined picture looks like.
 
Janice Stevenson, EVP of Client Relations, will highlight new ways to discover the innovative technologies being introduced by established organizations.
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