- Email: [email protected]
Patent information services from the U.K. patent office
World Patent Information, Pergamon Printed
Patent Information Patent Office*
Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 9ck-93. 1994 Elsevier Science Ltd Copyright 0 lYY4 CEClWIPO in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0172.2190/94$7.00+ .OO
Services from the U.K.
Trevor Lemon, Assistant Director, Marketing and Information U.K. Patent Ofice Summary
The advantages that CD-ROMs offer over, say, paper document collections have been well documented. A month’s supply of U.K. documentation which in hard copy form would take up about 160 cm of shelf space can be held on a disk which, in its jacket, measures no more than 10 mm in thickness. The savings in storage space, in maintenance and general administrative costs in switching from supporting paper collections to running CD-ROM systems yield true cost benefits which can be substantial.
Previous articles(l. 2) have reviewed the important roles played by patent-based information in promoting industrial welfare, and the means by which the Search and Advisory Service at the U.K. Patent Office has made this information more readily accessible to all sectors of commerce and industry. The impact that the new technologies are having on these operations is discussed in this paper. Particular reference is given to the increasing influence that optical storage means have exercised in enhancing the process of disseminating patent information.
The entire U.K. CD-ROM collection has now been integrated into other ESPACE products in the Search and Advisory Service (SAS) to provide a library that is having a growing influence on the manner in which patent information is disseminated. The Search and Advisory Service was set up in its present form just over six years ago as a result of a direct initiative by the U.K. government to make patent-based information more readily available to industrialists. It was proposed to harness the two major resources of the Office, namely the expertise of the patent examiners and their ability to access both in-house and external databases, to provide representatives from industry and commerce with information that has been analysed so that the end user has no difficulty in understanding the results of the investigation. It is not our general policy to provide industrialists, which include a high proportion (over 65%) of representatives from the small- and mediumsized industries, with a large quantity of documentation as a result of one of our investigations. Normally, for a patentability search, copies of no more than six patents would be supplied: these would be the most relevant prior art patent specifications which in the judgement of the examiner should be looked at most carefully if the question of patentability of the technology under review is to be resolved.
During the last 20 years, rapid progress has been made in the supply of patent documentation, first in various microforms and more currently using optical media. No more than six years ago it was uncommon to find any scientific or technical literature being produced in CD-ROM format. Today there is hardly a major patent office in the world that is not using this medium to a greater or lesser extent to make patent information more widely available. In 1979, the EPO started publishing EP ‘A’ specifications on CD-ROMs under the generic name ESPACE. From the beginning of 1991 the U.K. Patent Office has provided on CD-ROMs, under the ESPACE system, UK patent application (‘A’ documents) filed and published under the 1977 U.K. Patents Act. The complete back file covering the years 1979 onwards is now available, each disk in the series carrying around 1000 complete patent specifications. Using near standard ESPACE software, documents may be retrieved in the usual manner via priority data, title words and classification terms including terms from the U.K. Classification Key. The inclusion of the U.K. Classification codes as a searchable field provides patent examiners and end users with an additional, very valuable tool for retrieving patent information. *Based on a presentation Brussels, 6-8 October, 1993.
at
the
EPIDOS
User
Directorate,
Search . .
Meeting,
90
and Advisory
Service
Expertise of staff Extensive patent databases - paper document collection - online access - CD-ROM collection
Patent Information
Services from the U.K. Patent Office
To date, the SAS has undertaken over 10,000 patentbased commissions varying in complexity from the relatively simple bibliographic investigation through to in-depth statistical analyses. As a direct result of this work we are supplying each year around 11,000 patent copies, over 60% of which are satisfied directly by our own in-house CD-ROM library. The main sources of citations uncovered by searches undertaken by the SAS are shown in Fig. 1: prior art material arising from GB, EP, WO and US account for 90% of the citations, the remaining 10% originate principally from JP, DE and FR. A breakdown of the various types of investigations undertaken by the SAS during the year 1992 indicates clearly that patentability searching represents the largest single activity@).
US 26%
Fig.
1. Source
of patent literature cited Advisory Service.
by the
Search
and
Traditionally, patent information has been gathered from either internal or external online sources, with the CD-ROM collection playing a complementary role in providing hard copies of any relevant references uncovered in the investigation. The part played by CD-ROMs in disseminating patent-based
information 12 months.
has changed radically during the last
An increasing number of industrialists are keen to be kept abreast of technology by receiving, in the first instance, front pages of patents held on the CD-ROM format as soon as disks are received in the SAS unit. It is a simple matter to store on a PC a single search strategy that can be used to interrogate disks as they arrive and to arrange batch prints to be dispatched to the client. In this manner, all current publications of EP, UK, PCT and US patents are covered. The use of CD-ROMs as a search aid, complementing online investigations, arises in technical areas where the investigator may not be entirely familiar with current terminology. It is convenient and relatively inexpensive to investigate possible search terms and classification areas using the offline facilities of CD-ROMs. With the additional knowledge gained by this approach, it is possible to create more accurate strategies which can be used to interrogate online databases yielding results with a higher level of precision. This type of co-operation, sometimes called synergism, that exists between online information and CD-ROM information has been one of the great advances in recent years in the supply ‘and general dissemination of patent intelligence. This co-operation between online and CD-ROM information is being actively investigated in the U.K. Patent Office under a project carrying the acronym ESTEEM (ECLA Search Trial Evaluation using Electronic Media) (Fig. 2). ESTEEM is essentially a document imaging system for patent
Jhminer workstatiolls
network file server
Fig. 2. ECLA
Search
91
Trial Evaluation
using Electronic
Media.
92
T. Lemon
examiners who in the first place would produce a hit list of potentially relevant patent numbers from the EDOC database by using appropriate ECLA marks as search terms. Using software developed in-house these patent numbers are selected and used automatically as search terms to interrogate a number of parallel arranged INCOM jukeboxes, each holding 100 CD-ROMs. The front pages corresponding to the hit list may be retrieved, stored and viewed with ease at the examiner’s VDU terminal. For a typical hit list of around 150 this operation takes no more than five minutes to accomplish. The references of those front pages of greatest relevance may be tagged and the full document extracted from the CD-ROM collection so that it may be viewed in detail and, if required, printed at the examiner’s workstation. ESTEEM it has to be said is very much a pilot project - but with the Office’s paper document collection growing at its current rate it will not be long before space is at a premium. And because of this the ESTEEM project has assumed some importance in the Office. ESTEEM system will increase search efficiency also by removing time spent inspecting duplicate documents arising from the multiple classification of technologies disclosed in a single patent application. The ESTEEM project exploits the cost-effectiveness of the CD-ROM format by reducing greatly the space required for document storage. Savings are also made by minimizing the amount of paper used by printing only those patents of immediate
relevance. If the project lives up to expectations, it should be possible to modify readily the system so as to provide a compact and relatively inexpensive set-up for other information suppliers and users such as libraries and medium-sized industries. As mentioned above, the cost benefits can be significant when switching from paper document collections to systems based on CD-ROMs. Some of these gains have already been realised by the U.K. Patent Office in the development of an automated document delivery system. The project known as CODDS (Compact-disc Document Delivery System) is based on ESPACE U.K. CD-ROMs and provides print on demand. The system, developed about 18 months ago, is integrated into the office’s sales system and by a single manual entry will enable a patent copy to be produced in either simplex or duplex while at the same time creating an appropriate invoice to accompany the order. The CODDS system is sufficiently flexible to satisfy also the various patent document supply needs of other sections within the office. Currently, the ESPACE-U.K. collection covering the years from 1979 to date comprises around 250 disks; these are held in three INCOM jukeboxes which together with associated hardware and printers sit comfortably in a room no larger than 4.5 m2; the corresponding paper document collection stored in the traditional manner within the office would occupy over 1250 m of shelf space. This reduction
File server
IJISi printers
I
Interface
Jukebox
server
1
PCS
Sales system interface
/
Print generators /-
%3
Examiner
Existing
Fig. 3. Compact-disc
Document
sales system
Delivery
System.
link
Patent Information
Services from the U.K. Patent Office
in space requirements along with a lower number of supply staff now required to maintain and operate a document supply operation based on CD-ROMs have produced cost savings the benefits of which have been passed on to patent applicants. All search reports arising from patent applications filed in the U.K. Patent Office are now supported by copies of prior art patents identified during the preliminary examination stage and noted in the search report. It has been possible to introduce this service at no additional charge to the applicant; the additional in-house costs for supplying citations of U.K. material have largely been absorbed by the savings mentioned above.
93
The U.K. Patent Office will continue to explore ways in which patent information held on CD-ROMs can be exploited to produce real benefits to innovators and industrialists. This impact is set to grow as the product ranges in this medium expand and will, in turn, markedly alter the perception of patent-based information and the manner in which it is disseminated.
References (1)
(2)
T. H. Lemon, Technical and Commercial Information from Patent Literature. World Patent Information, 11, 25, 1989. T. H. Lemon, Information Services from the U.K. Patent Office, World Patent Information, 16, 1, 1994.
Patent Information Patent Office*
Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 9ck-93. 1994 Elsevier Science Ltd Copyright 0 lYY4 CEClWIPO in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0172.2190/94$7.00+ .OO
Services from the U.K.
Trevor Lemon, Assistant Director, Marketing and Information U.K. Patent Ofice Summary
The advantages that CD-ROMs offer over, say, paper document collections have been well documented. A month’s supply of U.K. documentation which in hard copy form would take up about 160 cm of shelf space can be held on a disk which, in its jacket, measures no more than 10 mm in thickness. The savings in storage space, in maintenance and general administrative costs in switching from supporting paper collections to running CD-ROM systems yield true cost benefits which can be substantial.
Previous articles(l. 2) have reviewed the important roles played by patent-based information in promoting industrial welfare, and the means by which the Search and Advisory Service at the U.K. Patent Office has made this information more readily accessible to all sectors of commerce and industry. The impact that the new technologies are having on these operations is discussed in this paper. Particular reference is given to the increasing influence that optical storage means have exercised in enhancing the process of disseminating patent information.
The entire U.K. CD-ROM collection has now been integrated into other ESPACE products in the Search and Advisory Service (SAS) to provide a library that is having a growing influence on the manner in which patent information is disseminated. The Search and Advisory Service was set up in its present form just over six years ago as a result of a direct initiative by the U.K. government to make patent-based information more readily available to industrialists. It was proposed to harness the two major resources of the Office, namely the expertise of the patent examiners and their ability to access both in-house and external databases, to provide representatives from industry and commerce with information that has been analysed so that the end user has no difficulty in understanding the results of the investigation. It is not our general policy to provide industrialists, which include a high proportion (over 65%) of representatives from the small- and mediumsized industries, with a large quantity of documentation as a result of one of our investigations. Normally, for a patentability search, copies of no more than six patents would be supplied: these would be the most relevant prior art patent specifications which in the judgement of the examiner should be looked at most carefully if the question of patentability of the technology under review is to be resolved.
During the last 20 years, rapid progress has been made in the supply of patent documentation, first in various microforms and more currently using optical media. No more than six years ago it was uncommon to find any scientific or technical literature being produced in CD-ROM format. Today there is hardly a major patent office in the world that is not using this medium to a greater or lesser extent to make patent information more widely available. In 1979, the EPO started publishing EP ‘A’ specifications on CD-ROMs under the generic name ESPACE. From the beginning of 1991 the U.K. Patent Office has provided on CD-ROMs, under the ESPACE system, UK patent application (‘A’ documents) filed and published under the 1977 U.K. Patents Act. The complete back file covering the years 1979 onwards is now available, each disk in the series carrying around 1000 complete patent specifications. Using near standard ESPACE software, documents may be retrieved in the usual manner via priority data, title words and classification terms including terms from the U.K. Classification Key. The inclusion of the U.K. Classification codes as a searchable field provides patent examiners and end users with an additional, very valuable tool for retrieving patent information. *Based on a presentation Brussels, 6-8 October, 1993.
at
the
EPIDOS
User
Directorate,
Search . .
Meeting,
90
and Advisory
Service
Expertise of staff Extensive patent databases - paper document collection - online access - CD-ROM collection
Patent Information
Services from the U.K. Patent Office
To date, the SAS has undertaken over 10,000 patentbased commissions varying in complexity from the relatively simple bibliographic investigation through to in-depth statistical analyses. As a direct result of this work we are supplying each year around 11,000 patent copies, over 60% of which are satisfied directly by our own in-house CD-ROM library. The main sources of citations uncovered by searches undertaken by the SAS are shown in Fig. 1: prior art material arising from GB, EP, WO and US account for 90% of the citations, the remaining 10% originate principally from JP, DE and FR. A breakdown of the various types of investigations undertaken by the SAS during the year 1992 indicates clearly that patentability searching represents the largest single activity@).
US 26%
Fig.
1. Source
of patent literature cited Advisory Service.
by the
Search
and
Traditionally, patent information has been gathered from either internal or external online sources, with the CD-ROM collection playing a complementary role in providing hard copies of any relevant references uncovered in the investigation. The part played by CD-ROMs in disseminating patent-based
information 12 months.
has changed radically during the last
An increasing number of industrialists are keen to be kept abreast of technology by receiving, in the first instance, front pages of patents held on the CD-ROM format as soon as disks are received in the SAS unit. It is a simple matter to store on a PC a single search strategy that can be used to interrogate disks as they arrive and to arrange batch prints to be dispatched to the client. In this manner, all current publications of EP, UK, PCT and US patents are covered. The use of CD-ROMs as a search aid, complementing online investigations, arises in technical areas where the investigator may not be entirely familiar with current terminology. It is convenient and relatively inexpensive to investigate possible search terms and classification areas using the offline facilities of CD-ROMs. With the additional knowledge gained by this approach, it is possible to create more accurate strategies which can be used to interrogate online databases yielding results with a higher level of precision. This type of co-operation, sometimes called synergism, that exists between online information and CD-ROM information has been one of the great advances in recent years in the supply ‘and general dissemination of patent intelligence. This co-operation between online and CD-ROM information is being actively investigated in the U.K. Patent Office under a project carrying the acronym ESTEEM (ECLA Search Trial Evaluation using Electronic Media) (Fig. 2). ESTEEM is essentially a document imaging system for patent
Jhminer workstatiolls
network file server
Fig. 2. ECLA
Search
91
Trial Evaluation
using Electronic
Media.
92
T. Lemon
examiners who in the first place would produce a hit list of potentially relevant patent numbers from the EDOC database by using appropriate ECLA marks as search terms. Using software developed in-house these patent numbers are selected and used automatically as search terms to interrogate a number of parallel arranged INCOM jukeboxes, each holding 100 CD-ROMs. The front pages corresponding to the hit list may be retrieved, stored and viewed with ease at the examiner’s VDU terminal. For a typical hit list of around 150 this operation takes no more than five minutes to accomplish. The references of those front pages of greatest relevance may be tagged and the full document extracted from the CD-ROM collection so that it may be viewed in detail and, if required, printed at the examiner’s workstation. ESTEEM it has to be said is very much a pilot project - but with the Office’s paper document collection growing at its current rate it will not be long before space is at a premium. And because of this the ESTEEM project has assumed some importance in the Office. ESTEEM system will increase search efficiency also by removing time spent inspecting duplicate documents arising from the multiple classification of technologies disclosed in a single patent application. The ESTEEM project exploits the cost-effectiveness of the CD-ROM format by reducing greatly the space required for document storage. Savings are also made by minimizing the amount of paper used by printing only those patents of immediate
relevance. If the project lives up to expectations, it should be possible to modify readily the system so as to provide a compact and relatively inexpensive set-up for other information suppliers and users such as libraries and medium-sized industries. As mentioned above, the cost benefits can be significant when switching from paper document collections to systems based on CD-ROMs. Some of these gains have already been realised by the U.K. Patent Office in the development of an automated document delivery system. The project known as CODDS (Compact-disc Document Delivery System) is based on ESPACE U.K. CD-ROMs and provides print on demand. The system, developed about 18 months ago, is integrated into the office’s sales system and by a single manual entry will enable a patent copy to be produced in either simplex or duplex while at the same time creating an appropriate invoice to accompany the order. The CODDS system is sufficiently flexible to satisfy also the various patent document supply needs of other sections within the office. Currently, the ESPACE-U.K. collection covering the years from 1979 to date comprises around 250 disks; these are held in three INCOM jukeboxes which together with associated hardware and printers sit comfortably in a room no larger than 4.5 m2; the corresponding paper document collection stored in the traditional manner within the office would occupy over 1250 m of shelf space. This reduction
File server
IJISi printers
I
Interface
Jukebox
server
1
PCS
Sales system interface
/
Print generators /-
%3
Examiner
Existing
Fig. 3. Compact-disc
Document
sales system
Delivery
System.
link
Patent Information
Services from the U.K. Patent Office
in space requirements along with a lower number of supply staff now required to maintain and operate a document supply operation based on CD-ROMs have produced cost savings the benefits of which have been passed on to patent applicants. All search reports arising from patent applications filed in the U.K. Patent Office are now supported by copies of prior art patents identified during the preliminary examination stage and noted in the search report. It has been possible to introduce this service at no additional charge to the applicant; the additional in-house costs for supplying citations of U.K. material have largely been absorbed by the savings mentioned above.
93
The U.K. Patent Office will continue to explore ways in which patent information held on CD-ROMs can be exploited to produce real benefits to innovators and industrialists. This impact is set to grow as the product ranges in this medium expand and will, in turn, markedly alter the perception of patent-based information and the manner in which it is disseminated.
References (1)
(2)
T. H. Lemon, Technical and Commercial Information from Patent Literature. World Patent Information, 11, 25, 1989. T. H. Lemon, Information Services from the U.K. Patent Office, World Patent Information, 16, 1, 1994.