A place for every patent, and every patent in its proper place. We know—that’s not quite how the old saying goes, but that’s the aim of BlueFoot, a company based in McLean, Virginia, that provides patent intelligence to corporate IP departments and to the U.S. Department of Defense. BlueFoot uses a “supervised” machine learning model to put patents within appropriate categories—an important first step when you’re delivering the type of intelligence that protects corporate and national security IP. In other words, BlueFoot doesn’t let the machine figure out patterns in patents and decide where they fit in. BlueFoot trains the machines with the company’s signature input in order to secure a better output on patent categorizations. Of course, the end product is only as good as the data points supporting the process, which is why BlueFoot relies on IFI CLAIMS, the industry’s most accurate and trusted patent database, drawing on more than 147 million records from over 100 countries.