Minesoft were pleased to support a recent supplement in The Times newspaper covering topical issues in the Intellectual Property (IP) world. The report, produced by Raconteur in partnership with INTA and CIPA, covers a broad range of topics including the modern phenomenon of NPE’s (Non-Practicing Entities) known colloquially as “patent trolls”, the special importance of IP rights and patent protection for the pharmaceutical industry and the impact of Brexit on IP rights.

The supplement was published in celebration of World IP Day on 26^th April 2017 which aims to promote the role that intellectual property rights play in encouraging innovation and creativity. The theme for World IP Day in 2017 was to learn about ways in which innovation makes our lives healthier and safer.

The IP system encourages innovation by attracting investment, rewarding creators and supporting them as they develop their ideas. This is highlighted in the final article of the supplement covering the importance that IP rights and patent protection hold for the pharmaceutical industry. Bringing a product from idea to market is extremely expensive, time consuming and has a high rate of failure across each stage of the process. Hence, the 20-year monopoly provided by patent protection is essential for them to recoup their investment.

At Minesoft we’re keen to encourage innovation, especially if it can make people’s lives safer, healthier and more comfortable. Hence, in 2010, we partnered with the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) in the ASPI programme to give researchers in developing countries free or low-cost access to sophisticated tools and services, like PatBase, for retrieving and analysing patent data.

As a business we were recently received a regional award from the Richmond-Upon-Thames for best in Innovation, reflecting the effort we make to constantly enhance our portfolio of patent solutions for an optimised user experience. This effort was rewarded in 2009 and 2015 when Minesoft received the prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise for an outstanding achievement in rapidly growing export markets in the field of Intellectual Property information.

The full supplement can be found here.

In November 2016, Minesoft were honoured to be selected as the winner of the Best Business for Innovation at the Richmond Business Awards. Furthermore, Minesoft was highly commended in the Best Exporter category.

As a local business we’re keen to give back to the community and have sponsored the Richmond Business Awards for a number of years. In addition, Minesoft’s Managing Director and Co-founder, Ann Chapman, is on the steering committee for the Richmond Business Investment District plan and last week Minesoft staff had the opportunity to discuss international issues informally with Nick Clegg MP, former deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Democratic Party.

At Minesoft, we are constantly innovating our products for an optimised user experience, hence, in 2009 and 2015, we won the prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise for an outstanding achievement in rapidly growing export markets in the field of Intellectual Property information.

Our products are developed with constant innovation in mind. In November 2015, we added TextMine to PatBase, enabling our users to instantly identify the chemicals, genes, proteins, diseases, polymers and physical parameters disclosed within the full text of millions of documents. We’ve also recently added a Semantic Search module to both PatBase and PatBase Express, enabling users to unearth hidden patents. Furthermore, we are continuously adding data from around the world, including full text patent data. In the past week we’ve added full text collections from the African Regional IP Organisation (AP) and Tunisia (TN), taking us to a total of 44 full text collections in PatBase.