- Email: [email protected]
EPO's Search Matters 2018, The Hague
World Patent Information 54 (2018) 49–51
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
World Patent Information journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/worpatin
EPO's Search Matters 2018, The Hague A R T I C LE I N FO
A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Patent information Patent search EPO Conference Search Matters
Search Matters is an annual event which is organised by multiple directorates in the European Patent Office. Search Matters 2018 event was the 30th in series [1] and took place fully-booked in the EPO premises in Rijswijk (close to The Hague, NL) from April 23rd to 25th. Since 2005, the location of Search Matters has been alternating between the EPO premises in Rijswijk and Munich (DE). Search Matters is targeted at patent search professionals. The main objective of the conference is to provide an accurate, in-depth understanding of the way the EPO examining staff searches when a patent application arrives on their desk, to explain their working methods, and to present the latest developments on the tools they have at their disposal. The conference is mainly attended by patent search professionals or other IP professionals such as patent attorneys, innovation and technology transfer managers from industry or universities, but also by scientists and owners of SMEs. 149 participants were registered this year. The EPO organizes another yearly conference in the area of patent information (EPOPIC) in one of the EPC countries. EPOPIC 2018 is being held in Brussels from November 12th to 14th. Both Search Matters and EPOPIC are warmly recommended, not only for patent specialists but also for anybody dealing with innovation, business trends, the current technology landscape, new developments and emerging technologies. Search Matters, aptly named because search does matter …!
1. Programme
Federated Register, all publicly accessible. Two fundamental remarks, which she called the two sisters, “quality” and “efficiency”, are present in EPO since then, as it was the first and only institution to be certified under the ISO standards and having its re-certification in 2017. Looking ahead into the future, the EPO is ready for the challenge of the 4th industrial revolution, maintaining a very proactive approach facing this topic with a dedicated seminar on the 30th of May this year.
The programme [2] kicked off with the traditional at-the-desk sessions, held in the afternoon before the main event. Additional registration and fee was required for this part, and seats were limited. These individual at-the-desk- sessions with EPO examiners are a unique opportunity to experience the EPO's examiner search methodology in the field of choice first-hand, and to gain insight into the EPO's search strategies and techniques for industry-specific searches. Four plenary sessions and six workshops were on the programme of the two-day main event. A networking evening event for all participants and presenters closed the first day. The workshops were attended by small groups in 7–9 parallel sessions allowing for questions and discussions. Attendees were invited to fill out a feedback form by the end of each session. However, contrary to previous years, participants had to make a binding selection of workshops upon registration. In her opening speech on the first day of the main event, Karin Seegert (COO Healthcare, Biotechnology and Chemistry, (HBC) EPO) highlighted the 30 years of commitment and dedication to quality of searches at the EPO and gave a historical overview from the early days of paper based searching in the 90s up till now. The first online tool available was EPOQUE, followed in 1998 by Espacenet (which nowadays has more than 100 million patent documents). A major step was the implementation of the CPC in 2013 together with USPTO, which today has already 25 countries involved. The following instrument completing the CPC was the Patent Translate tool in 2012 with multiple translation between 32 different languages, in particular Asian languages. There are now several online patent services from EPO, such as Espacenet, Global Dossier, Common Citation Document, Global Patent Index, European Publication Server, European Patent Register and the https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wpi.2018.08.003 Received 2 August 2018; Accepted 13 August 2018 0172-2190
2. Plenary sessions The first lecture was presented by Nigel Clarke (Research Manager, Promotion, Patent Information, EPO) and Björn Jürgens (senior analyst at the CITPIA patent information centre of the Innovation and Development Agency of Andalusia, Spain). Their presentation (based on a common project, 2016 [3]) gave a wide overview of the most important patent information search platforms and products owned by non-patent authorities (Google Patents, Lens, Free Patents Online, Patent Inspiration, SureChEMBL and Octimine, and Espacenet and GPI as benchmarks) available for use free of charge. Nigel Clarke remarked the implementation of new Espacenet improvements based on the feedback loops of the users. Their work was based on looking at about what other patent search services are offering to try to find out the unique selling propositions, “to identify the peaks above the clouds” as he worded it. Björn Jürgens explained the methodology, the analysis of the functions and features, strengths and weaknesses and the unique selling proposition of each database. The first day was closed by an entertaining and interactive, but instructive presentation from Sytse de Jonge (Director, Automation/ Search Tools and Information Management, EPO), Anne-Cécile Derrien and Petra van de Wetering (both examiners, HBC, EPO), entitled “Alice
World Patent Information 54 (2018) 49–51
in “How to Search-I wonder-land”. Similarities between Alice's search in Wonderland and a literature/patent search process were explored. Alice is curious and discovered that her search doesn't take her along a straight line, so she has to adapt her strategy in a changing world, just like a searcher who has to focus and refocus, to be aware of the biases, to think out of the box and to be open to the unknown, reviewing the thought patterns and ways of processing problems. On the second day, the first lecture was delivered by Francesco Zaccà (IT, Principal Director Operations, Information and Communications Technology (ICT), EPO), with Industry 4.0 as the topic. He showed a brief historical overview of the different industrial revolutions and the approach to the patent world. The future is not about Internet of Things, Internet of Everything or Industry 4.0, but about innovation based on software, artificial intelligence, automation of repetitive intellectual work and big data. For the patent system, it implies that all aspects of patenting in any technical sector will become fundamentally dependent on patent offices providing a stable, predictable and timely approach to the patenting of computer implemented inventions (CII) and software. The EPO is well prepared for the 4th industrial revolution; annual improvements to the CII content of the Guidelines for Examination, CII training throughout the entire EPO operational area, rigorous quality control (the entire patent grant system is ISO9001 certified), searches delivered within 6 months, examination to be completed within 12 months, opposition within 15 months and interdisciplinary technical divisions of 3 examiners for each application. The final plenary lecture with the challenging title “Jiu-jitsu and patent searching – how to get a black belt” was provided by Nigel Clarke. The first part of the presentation was about the evolution of futurism and the different mechanisms that can be applied, such as prediction, technology forecasting, technology foresight to define strategies in the medium to long term, and scenario-building. He discussed the impact of patent applications with inventions from the Industry 4.0 on the sources, number and complexity of inventions submitted to patent offices, on the patent searching and the working life of the patent searcher. The patent information industry must be prepared for Industry 4.0; as the computer will do automated routine searching, the role for the prior-art searcher will shift to a very advanced level and analysis. The patent searcher will need to understand CII, and the question of the role of classification arises as computer technologies will dominate. Patent information database providers will need to implement tools for language-independent searching and simultaneous searching in many languages. The IP5 offices and OECD are working on developing classification schemes for all fields of Industry 4.0.
precisely without the need to create additional classification symbols. C-sets are only authorised in a limited number of fields, as outlined in the Guide to the CPC. The presenters showed in an online demonstration how to search with C-sets in Espacenet, and the possibility to combine the C-sets with Boolean operators, but also with proximity operators; the latter is up till now only possible in Espacenet as open access patent database (some commercial databases such as Inpadoc on STN offer a similar possibility). Many examples were given and participants could test their understanding in the hands-on online exercises. Alan Bacon (Examiner, sector Mobility and Mechatronics (M&M)) and Robert Pötzsch (Examiner, HBC) showed in their workshop how to retrieve valuable information from the international patent offices' IP5 (cooperation programme between the world's 5 biggest patent offices, i.e. EPO, JPO, KIPO, SIPO, USPTO, since 2007) in the Global Dossier (GD) and the Common Citation Document (CCD). The GD provides direct and free of charge access to file wrapper information from multiple offices (JPO, KIPO, SIPO, EPO, USPTO, WIPO and CIPO) in a common format on a single location, and machine translation from an Asian language to English. The link to the Global Dossier is available on the bibliographic page and the Inpadoc family list in Espacenet. The CCD gathers all documents that have been cited in or against a patent (application) and its (extended) family members by applicant, opponent, third party or examiner with an indication of relevance for EP, CN, WO (where ISA is the EPO) and national applications where EPO carries out the search. The (double) inspector provides visualisation of citations. The timeline shows a 2D relative representation of family members and their citations. In his workshop “Searching chemical inventions by name”, Tim Lange (examiner, HBC) gave an overview of the databases (commercial databases such as CAS-Registry, Reaxys, Global Patent Index and Integrity as well as free of charge databases such as Google Patents, PubChem and ChemSpider) and the search strategies used at the EPO for name searching chemicals, drugs and agrochemicals as well as for searching structurally undefined inventions. Sylvie Perrone Dunet's (examiner, HBC) presentation gave an overview of efficient strategies for searching a blend of ingredients, particularly in the field of cosmetics. The ingredients can be specific or defined as functional features. Sylvie defined a 3-step search strategy. In a first step, she examines the application: the claims (ingredients, functional features, parameters and field of application) are analysed on novelty (N) and inventive step (IS), the description and examples are screened on IS (cited prior art, problem that is solved by the invention, synonyms, trademarks and equivalents for the ingredients, representative examples of the invention, presence or not of comparative data, what has been shown or proved). In the second step, a novelty search strategy focusing on the ingredients and based on classifications (CPC, F-terms) and keywords is developed. The third step concerns defining a search strategy for IS (technical effect of the ingredients). Przemyslaw Godzina (examiner, sector HBC) explored the field of computational chemistry. Searching prior art in the area of computational chemistry (including chemoinformatics) is complex due to the highly interdisciplinary character of the inventions in this evolving technical field that is no longer limited to the area of drug discovery and with a growing interest in the petroleum industry, the polymer chemistry, cosmetics and PAOC (Pure and Applied Organic Chemistry). Searching computational chemistry heavily relies on non-patent literature, thorough internet searches and classifications searches (combined with keywords) in patent databases. Useful CPC and IPC classes were presented. Search strategies for several examples from diverse industrial areas were given. The workshop “How to apply examiner search strategies on Espacenet” had a hands-on computer training part, where all the attendees were able to practice with Jörg Konter's (examiner, HBC) expertise. It was about searching in Espacenet for patent applications by using classification, search tables and a problem-solution approach. A
3. Workshops A selection of workshops is given below as it was impossible for the authors to attend all 25 workshops [4]. The workshop programme not only consisted of recurrent and most requested workshops (e.g. When to stop a search, Industry standards as prior art, Searching chemical inventions by name, Searching Markush formulae in organic and inorganic chemistry) but also contained some newcomers (e.g. Searching Computational Chemistry, 3D printing: Search Map and intro to new classification scheme, Searching crosstechnology inventions, How to search the indescribable – Search concepts for products requiring parametric and/or product-by-process definitions) on its list. The workshop “Searching with C-sets in CPC” was given by Katerina Theodoridou (Examiner and Team Manager, HBC) and Mark Plehiers (Examiner and classification Board Member, HBC). Combination sets (C-sets) are composed of a combination of existing symbols, each related to a specific feature, and hence make it possible to classify and search a combination of features of different aspects such as compositions, process steps or product-and-process relationships clearly and 50
World Patent Information 54 (2018) 49–51
in putting everything together and organising this intense event. It is worth mentioning that the lectures and material from the conference are available in the EPO website e-learning area. Search Matters is an event for learning, networking and knowledge transfer and as Karin Seegert in her opening speech said, we hope that Search Matters will last at least another 30 years!
practical example of a search for a pharmaceutical patent application was performed by the participants and a strategy for this search was developed. The search results were evaluated with the participants and a discussion on how it can be refined and re-focused to arrive at a better overview of the closest prior art were debated. For the recurrent “When to stop the search” workshop Günther Aichmayr (examiner, ICT) prepared a lively discussion regarding the expansion of available databases and search tools. In the old days the decision to stop a search was made when the bottom of the pile of correct classification groups was reached. The current situation is that there are many information sources available: online databases, journals, blogs, tweets, wiki pages, videos, pictures, podcasts and so on. The increase of noise, subjectivity and dataset searchable is evident and the specialist has to find new search strategies and become more and more multi-disciplinary. Some hints on when to stop searching were discussed and put into conclusions. “Efficient searching with situation-specific and adaptive search strategies: training material for patent searchers” was focused on searching for prior art ending with the retrieval of the best available prior art documents and, ideally, it should be performed in the shortest time possible. This was exposed by Ricardo Oltra-Garcia (Team Manager, M&M). He focussed on the fact that the best tool for a quality and efficient search is to have a good strategy and continuously revise and adapt to an iterative process. The criteria and strategies should be changed on the go, so as to direct the search towards the best prior art in the shortest time possible. Several good practical examples using closed-loop interactive search were shown. The workshop given by Wim van Klompenburg, (examiner, HBC) and Ian Wetherbee, (Google Patents) was an interactive session with live demos from Google patent toolbox. Together they explored how an iterative structured search process can be reinforced by extracting CPC classes, keywords, information about the inventor, citing/cited documents, applicant and so on. Some new features were presented and some new ones are still to come. They finished by showing how to evaluate and store the data by downloading on a table and also to export the search results.
References [1] see references [1] to [10] In conference Report on EPO's Search Matters 2017, World Patent Inf., 50 (2017), 52-54. [2] Programme available at: https://www.epo.org/learning-events/events/conferences/ 2018/search-matters/programme.html. [3] Study and comparison of the unique selling propositions (USPs) of free-to-use multinational patent search systems, World Patent Inf. 52 (2018) 9–16. [4] Workshops available at: https://e-courses.epo.org/course/view.php?id=48# section-2. Veerle Deblauwe (BE) is working as patent information consultant for Janssen Pharmaceutica NV since May 2013. Before she was Intellectual Property Manager and IP searcher at the Etex Innovation and Technology Centre for more than seven years and information scientist at Solvay Polyolefins Europe from 2000 to 2004. She is a member of the WON and the BEPIUG, and holds a Ph. D. in Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry.
Sofia Oliveira-Pires (PT) is working as a Senior Technology Transfer Manager and Coordinator of the Observatory for Technology Transfer (OVTT) in the University of Alicante, Spain since 2003. Before she was Research Assistant in the National Institute of Engineering, Technology and Innovation (INETI) in Lisbon. She holds a degree in Geophysical Sciences and a PhD in Fluid Dynamics.
4. Conclusions Veerle Deblauwe∗ Pauwels Consulting NV, Lambroekstraat 5A, 1831, Diegem, Belgium
Search Matters is undoubtedly the place to learn from the EPO's examiners, but also to let them know the needs of applicants and other patent information users. This conference has been a success since its inception in 1988 until now, being able to adapt to the request of the patent information users and to present challenges, and this thanks to the dedication and commitment of participants, examiners and the different sections of the EPO
∗
Sofia Oliveira-Pires Universidad de Alicante, Ap. de Correos 99, 03080, Alicante, Spain E-mail address: [email protected] (V. Deblauwe)
Corresponding author. 51
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
World Patent Information journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/worpatin
EPO's Search Matters 2018, The Hague A R T I C LE I N FO
A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Patent information Patent search EPO Conference Search Matters
Search Matters is an annual event which is organised by multiple directorates in the European Patent Office. Search Matters 2018 event was the 30th in series [1] and took place fully-booked in the EPO premises in Rijswijk (close to The Hague, NL) from April 23rd to 25th. Since 2005, the location of Search Matters has been alternating between the EPO premises in Rijswijk and Munich (DE). Search Matters is targeted at patent search professionals. The main objective of the conference is to provide an accurate, in-depth understanding of the way the EPO examining staff searches when a patent application arrives on their desk, to explain their working methods, and to present the latest developments on the tools they have at their disposal. The conference is mainly attended by patent search professionals or other IP professionals such as patent attorneys, innovation and technology transfer managers from industry or universities, but also by scientists and owners of SMEs. 149 participants were registered this year. The EPO organizes another yearly conference in the area of patent information (EPOPIC) in one of the EPC countries. EPOPIC 2018 is being held in Brussels from November 12th to 14th. Both Search Matters and EPOPIC are warmly recommended, not only for patent specialists but also for anybody dealing with innovation, business trends, the current technology landscape, new developments and emerging technologies. Search Matters, aptly named because search does matter …!
1. Programme
Federated Register, all publicly accessible. Two fundamental remarks, which she called the two sisters, “quality” and “efficiency”, are present in EPO since then, as it was the first and only institution to be certified under the ISO standards and having its re-certification in 2017. Looking ahead into the future, the EPO is ready for the challenge of the 4th industrial revolution, maintaining a very proactive approach facing this topic with a dedicated seminar on the 30th of May this year.
The programme [2] kicked off with the traditional at-the-desk sessions, held in the afternoon before the main event. Additional registration and fee was required for this part, and seats were limited. These individual at-the-desk- sessions with EPO examiners are a unique opportunity to experience the EPO's examiner search methodology in the field of choice first-hand, and to gain insight into the EPO's search strategies and techniques for industry-specific searches. Four plenary sessions and six workshops were on the programme of the two-day main event. A networking evening event for all participants and presenters closed the first day. The workshops were attended by small groups in 7–9 parallel sessions allowing for questions and discussions. Attendees were invited to fill out a feedback form by the end of each session. However, contrary to previous years, participants had to make a binding selection of workshops upon registration. In her opening speech on the first day of the main event, Karin Seegert (COO Healthcare, Biotechnology and Chemistry, (HBC) EPO) highlighted the 30 years of commitment and dedication to quality of searches at the EPO and gave a historical overview from the early days of paper based searching in the 90s up till now. The first online tool available was EPOQUE, followed in 1998 by Espacenet (which nowadays has more than 100 million patent documents). A major step was the implementation of the CPC in 2013 together with USPTO, which today has already 25 countries involved. The following instrument completing the CPC was the Patent Translate tool in 2012 with multiple translation between 32 different languages, in particular Asian languages. There are now several online patent services from EPO, such as Espacenet, Global Dossier, Common Citation Document, Global Patent Index, European Publication Server, European Patent Register and the https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wpi.2018.08.003 Received 2 August 2018; Accepted 13 August 2018 0172-2190
2. Plenary sessions The first lecture was presented by Nigel Clarke (Research Manager, Promotion, Patent Information, EPO) and Björn Jürgens (senior analyst at the CITPIA patent information centre of the Innovation and Development Agency of Andalusia, Spain). Their presentation (based on a common project, 2016 [3]) gave a wide overview of the most important patent information search platforms and products owned by non-patent authorities (Google Patents, Lens, Free Patents Online, Patent Inspiration, SureChEMBL and Octimine, and Espacenet and GPI as benchmarks) available for use free of charge. Nigel Clarke remarked the implementation of new Espacenet improvements based on the feedback loops of the users. Their work was based on looking at about what other patent search services are offering to try to find out the unique selling propositions, “to identify the peaks above the clouds” as he worded it. Björn Jürgens explained the methodology, the analysis of the functions and features, strengths and weaknesses and the unique selling proposition of each database. The first day was closed by an entertaining and interactive, but instructive presentation from Sytse de Jonge (Director, Automation/ Search Tools and Information Management, EPO), Anne-Cécile Derrien and Petra van de Wetering (both examiners, HBC, EPO), entitled “Alice
World Patent Information 54 (2018) 49–51
in “How to Search-I wonder-land”. Similarities between Alice's search in Wonderland and a literature/patent search process were explored. Alice is curious and discovered that her search doesn't take her along a straight line, so she has to adapt her strategy in a changing world, just like a searcher who has to focus and refocus, to be aware of the biases, to think out of the box and to be open to the unknown, reviewing the thought patterns and ways of processing problems. On the second day, the first lecture was delivered by Francesco Zaccà (IT, Principal Director Operations, Information and Communications Technology (ICT), EPO), with Industry 4.0 as the topic. He showed a brief historical overview of the different industrial revolutions and the approach to the patent world. The future is not about Internet of Things, Internet of Everything or Industry 4.0, but about innovation based on software, artificial intelligence, automation of repetitive intellectual work and big data. For the patent system, it implies that all aspects of patenting in any technical sector will become fundamentally dependent on patent offices providing a stable, predictable and timely approach to the patenting of computer implemented inventions (CII) and software. The EPO is well prepared for the 4th industrial revolution; annual improvements to the CII content of the Guidelines for Examination, CII training throughout the entire EPO operational area, rigorous quality control (the entire patent grant system is ISO9001 certified), searches delivered within 6 months, examination to be completed within 12 months, opposition within 15 months and interdisciplinary technical divisions of 3 examiners for each application. The final plenary lecture with the challenging title “Jiu-jitsu and patent searching – how to get a black belt” was provided by Nigel Clarke. The first part of the presentation was about the evolution of futurism and the different mechanisms that can be applied, such as prediction, technology forecasting, technology foresight to define strategies in the medium to long term, and scenario-building. He discussed the impact of patent applications with inventions from the Industry 4.0 on the sources, number and complexity of inventions submitted to patent offices, on the patent searching and the working life of the patent searcher. The patent information industry must be prepared for Industry 4.0; as the computer will do automated routine searching, the role for the prior-art searcher will shift to a very advanced level and analysis. The patent searcher will need to understand CII, and the question of the role of classification arises as computer technologies will dominate. Patent information database providers will need to implement tools for language-independent searching and simultaneous searching in many languages. The IP5 offices and OECD are working on developing classification schemes for all fields of Industry 4.0.
precisely without the need to create additional classification symbols. C-sets are only authorised in a limited number of fields, as outlined in the Guide to the CPC. The presenters showed in an online demonstration how to search with C-sets in Espacenet, and the possibility to combine the C-sets with Boolean operators, but also with proximity operators; the latter is up till now only possible in Espacenet as open access patent database (some commercial databases such as Inpadoc on STN offer a similar possibility). Many examples were given and participants could test their understanding in the hands-on online exercises. Alan Bacon (Examiner, sector Mobility and Mechatronics (M&M)) and Robert Pötzsch (Examiner, HBC) showed in their workshop how to retrieve valuable information from the international patent offices' IP5 (cooperation programme between the world's 5 biggest patent offices, i.e. EPO, JPO, KIPO, SIPO, USPTO, since 2007) in the Global Dossier (GD) and the Common Citation Document (CCD). The GD provides direct and free of charge access to file wrapper information from multiple offices (JPO, KIPO, SIPO, EPO, USPTO, WIPO and CIPO) in a common format on a single location, and machine translation from an Asian language to English. The link to the Global Dossier is available on the bibliographic page and the Inpadoc family list in Espacenet. The CCD gathers all documents that have been cited in or against a patent (application) and its (extended) family members by applicant, opponent, third party or examiner with an indication of relevance for EP, CN, WO (where ISA is the EPO) and national applications where EPO carries out the search. The (double) inspector provides visualisation of citations. The timeline shows a 2D relative representation of family members and their citations. In his workshop “Searching chemical inventions by name”, Tim Lange (examiner, HBC) gave an overview of the databases (commercial databases such as CAS-Registry, Reaxys, Global Patent Index and Integrity as well as free of charge databases such as Google Patents, PubChem and ChemSpider) and the search strategies used at the EPO for name searching chemicals, drugs and agrochemicals as well as for searching structurally undefined inventions. Sylvie Perrone Dunet's (examiner, HBC) presentation gave an overview of efficient strategies for searching a blend of ingredients, particularly in the field of cosmetics. The ingredients can be specific or defined as functional features. Sylvie defined a 3-step search strategy. In a first step, she examines the application: the claims (ingredients, functional features, parameters and field of application) are analysed on novelty (N) and inventive step (IS), the description and examples are screened on IS (cited prior art, problem that is solved by the invention, synonyms, trademarks and equivalents for the ingredients, representative examples of the invention, presence or not of comparative data, what has been shown or proved). In the second step, a novelty search strategy focusing on the ingredients and based on classifications (CPC, F-terms) and keywords is developed. The third step concerns defining a search strategy for IS (technical effect of the ingredients). Przemyslaw Godzina (examiner, sector HBC) explored the field of computational chemistry. Searching prior art in the area of computational chemistry (including chemoinformatics) is complex due to the highly interdisciplinary character of the inventions in this evolving technical field that is no longer limited to the area of drug discovery and with a growing interest in the petroleum industry, the polymer chemistry, cosmetics and PAOC (Pure and Applied Organic Chemistry). Searching computational chemistry heavily relies on non-patent literature, thorough internet searches and classifications searches (combined with keywords) in patent databases. Useful CPC and IPC classes were presented. Search strategies for several examples from diverse industrial areas were given. The workshop “How to apply examiner search strategies on Espacenet” had a hands-on computer training part, where all the attendees were able to practice with Jörg Konter's (examiner, HBC) expertise. It was about searching in Espacenet for patent applications by using classification, search tables and a problem-solution approach. A
3. Workshops A selection of workshops is given below as it was impossible for the authors to attend all 25 workshops [4]. The workshop programme not only consisted of recurrent and most requested workshops (e.g. When to stop a search, Industry standards as prior art, Searching chemical inventions by name, Searching Markush formulae in organic and inorganic chemistry) but also contained some newcomers (e.g. Searching Computational Chemistry, 3D printing: Search Map and intro to new classification scheme, Searching crosstechnology inventions, How to search the indescribable – Search concepts for products requiring parametric and/or product-by-process definitions) on its list. The workshop “Searching with C-sets in CPC” was given by Katerina Theodoridou (Examiner and Team Manager, HBC) and Mark Plehiers (Examiner and classification Board Member, HBC). Combination sets (C-sets) are composed of a combination of existing symbols, each related to a specific feature, and hence make it possible to classify and search a combination of features of different aspects such as compositions, process steps or product-and-process relationships clearly and 50
World Patent Information 54 (2018) 49–51
in putting everything together and organising this intense event. It is worth mentioning that the lectures and material from the conference are available in the EPO website e-learning area. Search Matters is an event for learning, networking and knowledge transfer and as Karin Seegert in her opening speech said, we hope that Search Matters will last at least another 30 years!
practical example of a search for a pharmaceutical patent application was performed by the participants and a strategy for this search was developed. The search results were evaluated with the participants and a discussion on how it can be refined and re-focused to arrive at a better overview of the closest prior art were debated. For the recurrent “When to stop the search” workshop Günther Aichmayr (examiner, ICT) prepared a lively discussion regarding the expansion of available databases and search tools. In the old days the decision to stop a search was made when the bottom of the pile of correct classification groups was reached. The current situation is that there are many information sources available: online databases, journals, blogs, tweets, wiki pages, videos, pictures, podcasts and so on. The increase of noise, subjectivity and dataset searchable is evident and the specialist has to find new search strategies and become more and more multi-disciplinary. Some hints on when to stop searching were discussed and put into conclusions. “Efficient searching with situation-specific and adaptive search strategies: training material for patent searchers” was focused on searching for prior art ending with the retrieval of the best available prior art documents and, ideally, it should be performed in the shortest time possible. This was exposed by Ricardo Oltra-Garcia (Team Manager, M&M). He focussed on the fact that the best tool for a quality and efficient search is to have a good strategy and continuously revise and adapt to an iterative process. The criteria and strategies should be changed on the go, so as to direct the search towards the best prior art in the shortest time possible. Several good practical examples using closed-loop interactive search were shown. The workshop given by Wim van Klompenburg, (examiner, HBC) and Ian Wetherbee, (Google Patents) was an interactive session with live demos from Google patent toolbox. Together they explored how an iterative structured search process can be reinforced by extracting CPC classes, keywords, information about the inventor, citing/cited documents, applicant and so on. Some new features were presented and some new ones are still to come. They finished by showing how to evaluate and store the data by downloading on a table and also to export the search results.
References [1] see references [1] to [10] In conference Report on EPO's Search Matters 2017, World Patent Inf., 50 (2017), 52-54. [2] Programme available at: https://www.epo.org/learning-events/events/conferences/ 2018/search-matters/programme.html. [3] Study and comparison of the unique selling propositions (USPs) of free-to-use multinational patent search systems, World Patent Inf. 52 (2018) 9–16. [4] Workshops available at: https://e-courses.epo.org/course/view.php?id=48# section-2. Veerle Deblauwe (BE) is working as patent information consultant for Janssen Pharmaceutica NV since May 2013. Before she was Intellectual Property Manager and IP searcher at the Etex Innovation and Technology Centre for more than seven years and information scientist at Solvay Polyolefins Europe from 2000 to 2004. She is a member of the WON and the BEPIUG, and holds a Ph. D. in Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry.
Sofia Oliveira-Pires (PT) is working as a Senior Technology Transfer Manager and Coordinator of the Observatory for Technology Transfer (OVTT) in the University of Alicante, Spain since 2003. Before she was Research Assistant in the National Institute of Engineering, Technology and Innovation (INETI) in Lisbon. She holds a degree in Geophysical Sciences and a PhD in Fluid Dynamics.
4. Conclusions Veerle Deblauwe∗ Pauwels Consulting NV, Lambroekstraat 5A, 1831, Diegem, Belgium
Search Matters is undoubtedly the place to learn from the EPO's examiners, but also to let them know the needs of applicants and other patent information users. This conference has been a success since its inception in 1988 until now, being able to adapt to the request of the patent information users and to present challenges, and this thanks to the dedication and commitment of participants, examiners and the different sections of the EPO
∗
Sofia Oliveira-Pires Universidad de Alicante, Ap. de Correos 99, 03080, Alicante, Spain E-mail address: [email protected] (V. Deblauwe)
Corresponding author. 51