See us at PIUG Next Week
We're getting ready to head off the Atlanta for the PIUG 2017 Annual Conference. We're looking forward to seeing all of our clients, partners, and friends. Be sure to stop by the exhibit hall to learn about newly available data and pick up a handy zip up totebag.
On Sunday, plan to attend the pre-conference sessions from our partners Gridlogics and Questel who will be covering their latest product developments. STN, another IFI partner, is hosting an extended post-conference session on Thursday which will discuss search techniques as well as an important product announcement.
This year's theme is The Complete 21st Century Patent Searcher and the conference will kick off with Nicholas Belkin from Rutgers University speaking on information seeking as a process. He will present information on research taking place at Rutgers and how it could lead to new models for information retrieval systems design applicable to patent search.
Product Updates
Full text for Brazil and Taiwan is now available. Full text and bibliographic data is fully integrated into the platform and ready for immediate use. For more information, contact us for data samples.
The CLAIMS Direct search index and web services have been updated. IFI’s value added standardized assignee, expiration dates and patent status indictors are now searchable. These fields can also be used in faceting and reporting. See the What’s New page on our documentation portal for more information.
A Message from Our CEO
At IFI CLAIMS®, we are dedicated to continuously expanding and improving the quality of our patent data. We have recently added Brazilian and Taiwanese data as part of our ongoing efforts. More authorities are in the pipeline and will be announced soon.
We have also improved our web services—making IFI’s value added data fields available for search and reporting.
Our customers are continuing to find new and innovative ways to integrate IFI’s data into their products and analysis systems. The ability to install our entire patent database locally in their data center provides security and flexibility. They can then easily sync patent data to their enterprise database, eDiscovery system, document management system and Big Data analysis tools. We have added new documentation on remote installations and updating procedures to support these customers.
Please let us know if you have any suggestions for content and improved services by using the contact information located at the bottom of this email.
The Future of Unitary Patents
Members of the European Parliament are on the verge of introducing the Unitary Patent and Unitary Patent Court. The Unitary Patent is designed to streamline the application and grant process of any patent for which the applicant wants coverage across the EU. Rather than submitting the European application to selected countries for examination (and paying fees to each of those countries), an applicant will be able to submit only to the EPO, pay only one fee, and achieve uniform coverage across all 26 participating countries. In addition, it is hoped that the examination process will proceed more rapidly than it has under national validation.
The existence of the Unitary Patent Court will provide a uniform legal system in which to contest the validity of patents across the EU.
The EPO hopes to begin the Unitary Patent process in December. However, 13 member nations including France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, must ratify this agreement for the Unitary Patent process to commence. The impact of Brexit on this requirement has not yet been determined, but the UK has signaled their continued support for this initiative. Poland and Spain have opted out.
For further details, including the intended transition process, please see the European Patent Office website.
