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Minesoft – winner of the Best Business for Innovation Award

best business for innovation

Ann Chapman stands with former MP for Richmond Park, Zac Goldsmith, current MP, Sarah Olney, the MP for Twickenham and the Mayor of Richmond-Upon-Thames, among others.

At the beginning of November, 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.

best business for innovation

Ann Chapman receives Minesoft’s award for Innovation from Greg Dyke, former Director-General of the BBC.

Twickenham stadium

Minesoft’s Caitlin Kavanagh and Katarina Bartos pose at the event in Twickenham Stadium.

Twickenham Stadium

Minesoft’s Diana Broomby, Katarina Bartos and Jia Lu enjoying the awards ceremony.

Press release
NEW Enhancements to PatBase and PatBase Express

New Non-Patent Literature Module

A new Non-Patent Literature module has now been added to PatBase and PatBase Express, making it easier for our users to broaden their searches and strengthen their foundation of knowledge in areas of interest. Accessing over 12 sources of non-patent & scientific literature, including ScienceDirect, PubMed, Scopus and Google Scholar, a PatBase or PatBase Express user can easily search for relevant patent and non-patent information in the same platform.

New Semantic Search

Discover hidden patents with our new semantic search module, recently added to PatBase and PatBase Express. From any text based query (e.g. an abstract, a set of claims), the Semantic search option identifies the relevant concepts and suggests technology areas within which the patent families identified fall within. Rather than a black box, the user remains in complete control and has the ability to select concepts of interest, add new concepts of interest and select the technology areas of interest. Semantic Search offers an interesting new way to expand and further explore subject searching for anyone using PatBase and complements keyword or patent classification searches by locating additional pertinent documents.

New PatBase Thesaurus

The new multi-disciplinary thesaurus combines Chemical Search, Language Explorer, Dictionary and Thesaurus into one easy to use product, allowing you to drill down further into areas of interest. The service allows users to identify and add synonyms, keywords, acronyms and translations of particular terms to a PatBase search strategy, optimising the way our users search for patents. PatBase and PatBase Express Users can utilise a type-ahead functionality to search for a term(s) of interest, identify synonyms and search selected synonyms.

Collaborate more effectively with our new Export and Sharing functions

Minesoft has recently launched a new Export module within PatBase, making it easier to export patent data and enabling a higher level of customisation. Legal status information can now be included with options to filter this information by country/date and the ability to include a link to the legal status timeline for the patents of interest.

In PatBase Express, it’s now possible to share results, add results to folders and search within a folder.

Press release
Enhanced Legal Status View in PatBase

Enhanced legal status view in PatBase

Here at Minesoft, we’ve recently updated the legal status section in PatBase. The legal status viewer provides INPADOC legal status information about publications within a family, using colour coding to help you visualise the data. Updated on a weekly basis (every Thursday), so you know the information is up-to-date and reliable. More…

Blog
New PatBase Enhancements

 

PatBase full text filters are now active for all PatBase searches

Minesoft has now made PatBase Full Text filters available for all PatBase searches. Previously, the Full Text filters, such as country, section, publication, were only active when conducting a keyword search. Users can now use the same filters for any type of search (e.g. assignee, inventor, classification code) by clicking on the Hit Analysis button in the Full Text or Hits view. The filters will then apply when the user moves on to the next record in PatBase. The advantage of such filters is the ability to focus your analysis on a country or section (e.g. claims) of interest to enhance the efficiency by which you can review a set of results.

New PatBase enhancement: PatBase Tip

The new PatBase Tip feature allows users to change the number of records per page when viewing search results. The tool allows for flexibility in viewing results; even if you have your display options set at 1- records per page in PatBase, you can use the “l x-y” command to change the number of records displayed per page, which is remembered when you click next.

PatBase family notes and rankings are now visible to PatBase Express users

Minesoft has optimized the PatBase Express results options for its users, allowing them access to family notes and rankings that may have been added to results folders published by PatBase users.

 

 

Press release
New PatBase Thesaurus Goes Live!

Minesoft is pleased to announce the release of an innovative new search interface development that has been added to PatBase. The new, multi-disciplinary “PatBase Thesaurus” offers new capability and features as well as incorporating previously available search functionality and options that can now be found in one area of the Menu-driven Search Interface.  “Chemical Search”, “Language Explorer” (translation of specialised Sci-Tech terminology), the PatBase Dictionary and the newly designed Thesaurus have been brought together into one easy-to-use section of the PatBase Search Interface, allowing clients to drill down further into areas of interest. The service allows users to identify and add synonyms, keywords, acronyms and translations of particular terms to a PatBase search strategy, optimising the way patent & technology researchers can locate patents. A type-ahead functionality makes it even easier to identify term(s) of interest, find synonyms and ultimately search selected synonyms in PatBase.

PatBase Thesaurus has been designed to offer a variety of specific categories right from the start, such as Genes and Proteins, Chemicals or Languages, relevant in many areas of international patent research. Direct links are also provided to third party resources such as the National Institution of Biological Information or Wikipedia.  The new PatBase Thesaurus option makes it easier to delve more deeply into a patent or technology subject search and critically, it helps locate the correct search terms.  PatBase Thesaurus has been designed to help patent researchers control how narrow or broad their ultimate search should be.

Press release
Minesoft launches new version of CiteTracker for monitoring patent citations

New version of CiteTracker logo

Global Intellectual Property information specialist Minesoft has released a new, improved version of CiteTracker, the only application on the market able to automatically track and identify newly published patent citations.

Patent citations can provide a valuable insight into competitor activity and opportunities and threats around technology areas of interest. Tracking patent citations forms an important part of an organisation’s competitive intelligence strategy and CiteTracker – launched originally at the end of 2014 – allows users to be automatically alerted to new citations of interest each week as they are added to patent documents.

Rob Poolman, Senior Manager, Innovation and Consulting at Minesoft, explains, “Organisations can use CiteTracker in-house to monitor which competitors are citing their own patent portfolio, or to discover what technologies are most frequently being cited. IP law or patent attorney firms can expand their IP services offering by providing clients with a watch service based on CiteTracker results. With no comparable services currently available on the market, CiteTracker offers organisations a unique, time-saving business intelligence resource.”

The latest iteration of CiteTracker follows an extensive period of development and testing by Minesoft’s in-house software development team, with the aim of improving the user experience and maximising the time-saving capabilities of the service. Features such as the ability to filter citations by direction (backward/forward), jurisdiction, examiner category code and assignee, and the option to remove self-citations, all speed up the review process. For the first time, Analytics functionality has been built in to the service, enabling users to visualise the number of citations over time and the top assignees (patent owners). The all-new interface also includes seamless links to Citation Explorer – an interactive tool developed by Minesoft for exploring citation data including a citation tree and timeline – for in-depth investigation of relevant citations.

With additional capabilities including enhanced reporting functionality and the collation of all alerts into a single, simple email, CiteTracker presents a streamlined solution for capturing and reviewing newly published patent citations as part of a comprehensive Competitive Intelligence strategy.

For more information about CiteTracker, contact Minesoft on [email protected] or +44(0)208 404 0651

Press release
Minesoft featured in official commemorative album for The Queen’s 90th Birthday

Minesoft, the London-based global Intellectual Property solutions provider, will appear in the official commemorative publication for The Queen’s 90th Birthday Celebration to take place at Windsor Castle this year.

The Queen’s 90th Birthday Celebration will take place from 12 to 15 May 2016 in Home Park, Windsor Castle, and will celebrate The Queen’s life, her dedication to the Commonwealth and international affairs, her involvement with the armed forces and her love of horses.

As part of these celebrations, publisher St James’s House has produced an official commemorative album for the event – the only publication sanctioned and endorsed by the organisers.

“Our commemorative album will be presented as a gift to VVIP and VIP guests at each of the four evenings,” says Richard Freed, Chief Executive of St James’s House. “Copies of the book will also be distributed to key figures and organisations around the world including heads of state, ambassadors and leaders of industry.”

In addition to celebrating the life and reign of The Queen, the publication showcases a selection of organisations in the UK and Commonwealth, or with strong ties to Britain. These organisations are drawn from educational, cultural, social, technological and business spheres, and include Royal Charter holders, Royal Warrant holders and recipients of the Queen’s Awards. Collectively, they provide insights into the Commonwealth today and into the UK’s role in the wider world.

In the area of Intellectual Property and Scientific Research, one of the organisations selected to appear in the publication is Minesoft.

“Minesoft is a global patent data specialist and we were approached by publisher St James’s House with an invitation to appear in the event’s official commemorative album,” says Ann Chapman, Minesoft Co-Founder and Director. “We were invited based on our good editorial fit for the project, and it’s a great honour to be part of this historic celebration.”

Founded in 1996, Minesoft develops software solutions in the Intellectual Property field, providing international patent databases, competitive intelligence, analytics and customised archive solutions. Headquartered in Richmond-upon-Thames, London, Minesoft serves many Fortune 500/FTSE 100 companies around the world as well as state-run Patent Offices and specialist Intellectual Property Law firms. Minesoft’s solutions, developed and maintained in-house, are designed to help companies to protect their innovations and to exploit the value of Intellectual Property and scientific information throughout the innovation process. Minesoft was awarded the prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise in both 2009 and 2015 for its impressive, sustained growth in International Trade.

Asked about the participation of Minesoft, Richard Freed of St James’s House says: “As the official publisher for The Queen’s 90th Birthday Celebration, we have been entrusted with telling the Queen’s story. We were also tasked with finding suitable editorial partners for the book, and we were delighted when Minesoft agreed to help us mark this important milestone.”

patent citations
Blog
The Power of Patent Citations

 

Why are patent citations so often underestimated and underused?

A combination of the volume of citations and their complexity makes it difficult to know how to efficiently navigate and explore patent citation data. Yet, despite these challenges, there are many benefits to the use of citations for patent analysis and competitive and business intelligence.
A patent citation is a document cited by an applicant, third party or a patent office examiner because its content relates to a patent application. Any publicly available document can be cited including an existing patent publication, journal article, internet publication, conference abstract or oral disclosure.

There are two type of citations:
1) Backward citations are earlier published documents that are publicly available before the filing date of a new patent application and are sometimes called “prior art”.

These are useful to discover closely related patents and literature and can supplement or enhance an initial keyword or classification based search. Backward citations identified by patent examiners are also classified based on relevance to the patent application in question. This classification can be useful to quickly focus a search to the most relevant “prior art”. Since different patent examiners can often cite different prior art against the same invention it can be useful to review the backward citations of all patent family members.

2) Forward citations are more recently published documents which have gone on to cite the new patent application.

These forward citations are also useful from a competitive or business intelligence perspective to identify players working in a similar area/technology to the new patent application. For example, monitoring the forward citations of a new patent application allows a user to identify new competitors entering a similar field of technology, potential infringers and, possibly, potential licensing opportunities. The only word of caution when analysing forward citations is that there is a time lag effect, where more recently published patents will have less forward citations than older patents. This needs to be taken into account when comparing patents based solely on the number of forward citations.

One easy way to exploit this data is to use the new Citation Explorer module in PatBase. Developed by Minesoft in partnership with RWS Group, PatBase is a patent full-text database covering over 100 million patent documents from more than 100 countries. Patent citations are captured as part of the database and are analysed in Citation Explorer at the level of a patent publication or a patent family. To aid this analysis, a number of unique features are available in Citation Explorer.

Citations can be sorted and filtered based on country of origin, date, assignee and examiner relevance codes (e.g. X, Y). A dual panel view allows a side-by-side comparison of a citation with the patent application to which it relates. The ability to flag and add notes against relevant citations and to identify those citations which, from a legal status perspective, are dead or alive helps the user efficiently review and identify citations of interest.

Citation Explorer can help patent information users to overcome the difficulties in examining patent citations and provide powerful information to aid patent analysis and gain competitive or business intelligence.
For more information on PatBase and Citation Explorer, please contact us at [email protected],or see for yourself with a free trial at www.discoverpatents.net

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