Press release
Minesoft and Darts-ip announce a
new global case law information
service within PatBase

Minesoft & Darts-ip announce a new global case law information service within PatBase

PatBase, the leading searchable global database of patents, utility models and designs co-produced by RWS PLC and Minesoft, will soon be enhanced by the extensive Darts-ip collection of patent/IP litigation data.  Direct Links from PatBase will lead to detailed disclosures in the rapidly growing global Darts-ip Case Law database. More…

technology
Blog
Minesoft ranked as one of the 10 Most Promising Legal Technology Solution Providers – 2018

As technology develops in every industry, it’s no wonder that there have been digital breakthroughs in law too. For example, there are now solutions that allow firms to pre-load exhibits and keep them private until they are shared with all parties, capture witness video, and so much more – click here to find out more. So, Minesoft wanted to be part of this change in the industry and CIO Review India recently included us in their list of Top 10 Most Promising Legal Technology Solution Providers, as a result of a strive towards excellence and innovation in the field. More…

Press release
This September, Minesoft is the Diamond Sponsor at a pioneering, new IP event – The Patent Olympiad

The Patent Olympiad will be held in parallel with the CEPIUG 10-year anniversary conference in Milan, Italy. Minesoft is honoured to be able to support the competition with free use of our searchable global patent family database, PatBase, and sponsoring prizes. The event will be a great opportunity to bring recognition to the profession and the first of its kind, highlighting the fun, the challenge and the thrill of the hunt!

Contestants will have access to leading patent database, PatBase, relied on by IP professionals around the world. Having access to high-quality patent data is crucial to the accuracy and precision of any patent search and the data quality in PatBase is maintained by a close working relationship with the patent offices around the world. Thousands of error corrections are made to the data we receive and combined with additional information to add quality to the end file. This combined with the global reach of the data available – we now have 60 full text collections from countries around the world, with access to patent data from 106 countries overall – will provide a solid starting point for all contestants!

The Patent Olympiad was founded by four volunteers from the US, Canada, Scandinavia and Central Europe as a global networking event for anyone who does patent searching in their careers – not just mainstream “patent information professionals”.

“Ever since our first get together, one late night in Georgia, we’ve been working hard and looking forward to launching a new kind of IP event, the Patent Olympiad – a patent search contest that will test patent search skills whilst still being a lot of fun. See you in Milan!” Patent Olympiad founders: Andrea, Cathy, Linus and Nigel.

“Patent searching is difficult and time consuming. Blending the requirements of scientific research and multiple language searching in legal documents is not easy and we admire the participants hugely.” Ann Chapman, Minesoft Co-founder

Arranged in a 3-part format, the Patent Olympiad will cover Invalidity Searching, Prior Art Searching and a multiple-choice test on patent-related questions. Sign up today at: https://patentolympiad.org/

 

Blog
Innovations to solve the ever-growing problem of plastic pollution

Innovations to solve the ever-growing problem of plastic pollution

On 21st June 2018, Minesoft sponsored a local paddle-boarding event organised by the Richmond BID (Business Investment District) to raise awareness of plastic pollution in the River Thames. Plastic pollution in our oceans and rivers is a growing problem, as shown by the recent launch of the New Plastic Economy Innovation Prize, an initiative to find new and innovative alternatives to plastic packaging.

More…

Blog
Tech giants form Digital Geneva Convention to protect civilians in Cyberspace

Tech giants form Digital Geneva Convention to protect civilians in Cyberspace

The internet has unquestioningly revolutionised our world. It enables us to remain connected across vast distances, to share information between groups in the time it takes to pose a question and supports an ever-increasing complexity in available services.

A new place has been created for humans, or at least for their actions and words, to inhabit: Cyberspace. With the formation of Cyberspace, the internet has become something more than a tool, it has become a frontier of sorts. A place where new cultures and groups are formed between people that will never meet face to face, and just like any frontier, Cyberspace has its share of pirates and bandits.

More…

Press release
Minesoft is an official patron of the Harry and Meghan wedding album published by St James’s House

Saturday 19 May was a day of celebration around the world as Prince Harry tied the knot with the American actress Meghan Markle. To mark this royal occasion, Minesoft, the London-based global Intellectual Property solutions provider, will appear in  Harry & Meghan – The Wedding Album, written exclusively by Royal Biographer, Robert Jobson and published by St James’s House this Summer.

This magnificent 300-page book will feature exquisite photography from throughout the royal couple’s lives, from their early years, to the tale of their engagement, to the build-up to the big day.

“Having produced prominent publications for Her Majesty the Queen’s 90th birthday celebrations, the Diamond Jubilee River pageant and the platinum wedding anniversary, we understand how important these momentous occasions are to the general public.” Explains Richard Freed, CEO of St James’s House. “This royal wedding will be celebrated by a worldwide audience and we at St James’s House will be creating a high-quality book that will serve as a treasured keepsake for years to come.”

“It is an honour to be included alongside leading charitable organisations and business. Our work in spreading detailed information about technological & scientific innovation to developed and less developed countries will hopefully benefit some of the causes close to the hearts of Harry and Meghan in the future too” Ann Chapman-Daniel, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Minesoft commented.

As a London-headquartered company, with strong roots in the local community – Minesoft is pleased to have been selected as an official sponsor of and editorial contributor to the Harry and Meghan wedding album.

Founded in 1996, Minesoft develops international searchable patent databases and web-based products for Intellectual Property (IP) research. The company offers an array of products for the patent information industry, specialising in patent searching, IP document retrieval, patent analytics and competitive intelligence systems.

Minesoft was awarded the prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise in 2009 and again, in 2015 for its impressive, sustained growth in International Trade. A testament to the company’s ongoing innovation and work to meet the needs of its fast-growing global client base through an international customer support network, tailored training and a range of essential resources.

Blog
Jochen Lennhof, Director, speaks about the effect of digitisation on Minesoft solutions

Jochen Lennhof, Director at the Minesoft Office in Germany, was recently interviewed by PASSWORD about the effect of digitisation on Minesoft solutions. You can read the German version of the interview on the PASSWORD website here. Or alternatively, we have translated it into English below.

Jochen Lennhof joined Minesoft in 2004 and manages Minesoft’s business and clients in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, playing an active role in developing corporate In-house and work-flow solutions.

With the ever-increasing rate of digitisation, how has this effected the work that Minesoft do and the data that you offer?

The ability to process patent information digitally is crucial to the work that we do. We collect digital information from over thirty different sources and quickly process it for our different platforms, such as PatBase, the searchable patent database, and Legal StatusTracker, the automated monitoring service for patent legal status information. These processes are almost exclusively automated which means that they are as efficient as possible. For example, Chinese patent documents are machine translated and indexed within a day of publication, making them easy to search both in original language and the machine translated version.

The digitisation of patent information has also enabled us to immediately make publications available for chemical structure searching with Chemical Entity Recognition Technology (CERT). This makes patent data more easily accessible by chemists because, in addition to a classic keyword search, a chemical structure can be drawn and the corresponding text searched, from which the chemist can review all relevant patents located.

A growing trend in the patent information field is the ability to render data as a graphic/chart or similar visualisation. To do this, large data sets must be processed in a matter of seconds to create meaningful visualisations of the information. Having patent data that has been checked systematically – and corrected – to ensure high quality and accuracy, together with the most comprehensive pool of underlying data is the important starting point – only this type of procedure in preparing patent data ensures that the resulting searchable information can be trusted. PatBase Analytics V2 provides on-the-fly diagrams and overviews of applicants, classifications and legal status, as well as heat maps and keyword clusters.

In addition, digitisation enhances Minesoft’s visibility through social media and helps us to communicate with customers. You can follow us on Twitter or the Minesoft Blog and connect with us on LinkedIn. We publish many articles and links on the Minesoft website, written regularly by Minesoft staff for IP magazines or by third parties on subjects of interest to Intellectual Property and specifically, patenting.

How has digitisation affected patent offices, for example, in the registration process, and how does that affect the data you are processing?

As data producers, the patent offices determine the quality of the first level data we receive – errors made here can be difficult to fix, however we run algorithms and checks on the first level data and correct or add to the data in various ways. The electronic application process is of great help. For example, in the first step when submitting an application, there is a plausibility check, and further internal and external communication takes place electronically. In the process of “Quality In / Quality Out” this is an important element and one that RWS and Minesoft build on in preparing PatBase data for searching. We add machine translations using the highest quality tools available, using RWS’s worldwide expertise in the field of translation of scientific and patent documents. We translate names of Patent Assignees (patent owners, usually company names) from non-Latin languages such as Chinese and Japanese to provide a standard spelling for Western researchers.

What does the spike in patent applications from China mean for Minesoft as a patent information provider?

More data! It is more important than ever to be able to provide large amounts of information quickly and reliably. It is also important to make sure that we have can provide quality machine translation. Since the end of 2017, we have been using new self-learning systems for machine translation in cooperation with our partner RWS. This “Neural MT Framework” captures the meaning of the text instead of recognising only consecutive words in a sentence. As a result, the translations are timely and of ever-improving quality. We also use this machine translation system for other languages, such as Japanese, Korean and Russian.

The large number of patent applications coming from China is also a symptom of the increasing interest in international patent information there. Hence, the demand for PatBase data has grown significantly over recent years. The commercial subsidiary of the Chinese Patent Office – the Intellectual Property Publishing House (IPPH) – will be supplying our products in China as our new distributor. IPPH has established itself as a leading provider of Chinese patent information products and solutions. The addition of IPPH to our network will expand our presence in the important Chinese market and expand our customer base worldwide.

For more information about our suite of patent solutions, or if you are interested in a free trial/demonstration, contact us at [email protected] or on +44 (0)20 8404 0651.