PATOffice Research - Research patents efficiently and easily

In our last blog article we roughly covered what patent search means, when and why you should do it and what exactly you should look out for when researching patents.

Today we go one step further and introduce you to patent search in our software PATOffice.

Note: Due to the current rapid development in the software sector, we refrain from presenting our product in detail, but would still like to give you an insight into our functions and the added value we generate for you.

The following topics are covered in this blog article:

• Patent Research - a short digression
• PATOffice - a short digression
• PATOffice patent research

Patent Research - a short digression

What is a patent research?

A patent research is a process of searching for existing patents in public patent databases. The goal is to gather information about existing patents to find out if a new invention or idea is already patented. A patent research helps to understand the state of the art in a particular field and enables inventors to better assess their innovations.

Why do a patent research?

A patent research is important for several reasons.

• It can help avoid costly and time-consuming patent litigation. By checking patent databases, potential patent infringement can be avoided.
• A patent research allows inventors to determine if their idea is novel and non-obvious. If a patent already exists for a similar invention, this may mean that their idea is not patentable.
• Patent researches can also help find inspiration for new innovations by analyzing existing technologies and identifying gaps or opportunities for improvement.

What do you have to look out for in a patent research?

First of all, it is crucial to choose the right patent database that is relevant for the specific application area or country.

PATOffice is an example of easy access to such a patent database. PATOffice can help to research specific patents and to get information about the state of the art.

In order to filter out only the relevant patents from the flood of data, it is necessary to use suitable search terms, synonyms and technical terms.

Therefore, it is often advisable, especially for tricky topics, to put together a team of specialists for researching patents, consisting of a patent attorney and a technical expert.

You can find more tips and tricks here.

For whom is a patent research relevant?

Inventors and companies developing new products or technologies can benefit from a patent research to ensure their idea is unique and avoid potential patent infringement. Investors and business advisors can use patent researches to assess the value of a company or technology. Lawyers and patent examiners use patent researches to evaluate the validity of patents and resolve disputes.

PATOffice - a short digression

What is PATOffice?

PATOffice is a cloud-based patent data management and analysis software that simplifies complex and time-consuming tasks such as patent researches, analysis and monitoring processes.

The software features a modern, intuitive dashboard, automated workflows, global patent research capabilities, and an analysis area that provides visually appealing insights.

With PATOffice, you can streamline your IP management, collaborate efficiently as a team, and make informed decisions for tomorrow with ease.

Using a software solution like PATOffice enables companies to stay ahead of their competition.

What solutions does PATOffice offer?

In addition to easy-to-navigate dashboards for admins and users, PATOffice offers direct access to worldwide patent databases. Patent researches are thus super easy. Research profiles can be quickly saved and transferred to an automated workflow. This way you can easily let PATOffice research relevant patents on a regular basis and never miss a relevant application or process status change.

Easy-to-create workflows, e.g. automatic classification, tagging, forwarding to colleagues, commenting or saving, increase your efficiency and facilitate your daily work.

Our newest feature, PATOffice Workspaces, gives you the possibility to classify patents multiple times or to assign them to specific technology fields with different relevance and comments.

PATOffice's feature list is long and the queue for our internal developers is even longer. So PATOffice users may regularly expect the latest updates directly in the tool.

Who benefits from PATOffice?

• Inventors, Innovators, Innovation Management & R&D: PATOffice supports inventors in verifying the novelty of their ideas and helps them understand the state of the art in their field. It enables them to better assess their innovations and avoid potential patent infringement.
• Corporations and start-ups: it is important for companies to analyze the market and existing patents in their field in order to optimize their product development and patent strategy. PATOffice provides them with the necessary tools to review prior art and gain competitive advantage.
• Patent Attorneys and Patent Examiners: PATOffice supports patent attorneys and patent examiners in searching and analyzing patents. It facilitates patent validity checks, citation identification and prior art evaluation.
• Investors and technology consultants: PATOffice enables investors and technology consultants to better assess the value of a company or technology. They can analyze patent trends, identify potential opportunities and make informed investment decisions.

The PATOffice patent research

Boundless search - how does our global patent search work?

Formerly the europatent Navigator, today the PATOffice research.

Patent research is a relevant topic for many professions (see above). However, freely available tools are mostly complex, the user interface is outdated and not intuitively designed and mostly the tools can be used independently from other software solutions.

What exactly does this mean?

It means that patent researches can be performed tediously, but you can't do much with the results you get at first. Results can usually be downloaded as a CSV or Excel spreadsheet, shared with colleagues via email and then saved somewhere where you will never find the results again.

At PATOffice we solve exactly this problem.

PATOffice Research is part of our software solution and can be accessed directly via the menu item "Research".

Basically, PATOffice Research works similar to any other freely available solution from ESPACENET or USTPO, for example. However, we would like to say that our solution is much more modern, simple and intuitive - it can be used by everyone quickly and easily.

At the same time, the research term and input options are almost limitless. Every data point from a patent document can be entered or used as a filter option.

Worldwide data - where do we get our data from?

We obtain our data from IFI CLAIMS or IFI DIRECT.

IFI DIRECT provides a global patent database and web service for application developers, data scientists and product managers.

Secured researches - how do we ensure that your patent researches are not accessible by third parties?

All PATOffice customers receive their own client access, which means that PATOffice strictly separates content from each other in terms of database technology. Initial patent researches via our data providers are done via an API interface. Thus, all results are first transferred to the PATOffice interface. In order to make the patent specifications accessible in PATOffice in the long term, they are added to the company's internal PATOffice database. There they are also assigned to a workspace, e.g. for a certain technology field.

Stored documents from so-called research projects thus remain in a safe place and you can either retrieve the documents again at a later time or add them directly to your monitoring as relevant patents.

Research and beyond - how to work with the results?

It is one thing to find patents in worldwide databases and to check their relevance for one's own company, one's own subject area or technology field. The other thing, in our eyes at least as important, is working with the results.

What do I do with the hits? How do I work my way through the relevant writings? How do I forward them to colleagues? How do I take notes or categorize the writings in a meaningful and efficient way?

These are exactly the questions we asked ourselves at PATOffice.

That's why our patent research doesn't stop after successfully finding relevant patents.

Exciting patents can be saved directly:

1. In a static workspace - a project: Either in a secured static workspace, i.e. a research that you save as it is so that you can find it again at a later date.
2. In a monitoring profile: If the research and the associated research terms have been so accurate that all hits actually seem highly relevant to you, we can also create the variables of the research as a separate monitoring profile, or add them to an existing one. This way, you will regularly receive the latest writings that match this search input.
3. Or "Loose" in your PATOffice database: You can also store fonts without assigning them to a specific workspace in your very own PATOffice database (we also call it the PATOffice Search). This way the patent does not belong to a specific workspace for the time being - but you can easily find the font again later and work with it in time.

No matter where you finally save the patent, after saving it is possible to work with the document everywhere in PATOffice.

By clicking on the document in the list, you get directly into the patent, into our so-called "Detail View".

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PATOffice Detail is wonderfully easy to work with. The left part displays the bibliographic data of the patent specification. Here you can find all the information of the document and display the desired view:

For example, drawings and descriptions, claims and citations, or drawings and drawings 😉.

On the right side you can add new information:

• Rating
• Tags
• User
• Comments
• etc.

This makes working with newly researched patents an absolute breeze.

Patent research integrated into your IP management system - all advantages at a glance

• All in one tool - you can perform your patent search directly in your familiar monitoring tool
• Simple user interface - our PATOffice search can actually be used by anyone
• Display of results according to your wishes - the tabular display of results can be customized according to your wishes. The way you work best
• Fast saving in workspaces or in the PATOffice database
• Tidy search management
• Direct working with the patent in the tool (comments, ratings, tags, users, etc.)
• Export of results
• Easy workflow creation with relevant search results

AI in patent management or why we currently let our AI work elsewhere - all disadvantages at a glance

• Researching patents is complex - This is mainly due to the unimaginable mass of patent documents (currently over 150 million documents). In order to filter out only the relevant ones, an intelligent and, above all, meaningful search with appropriate search terms is required. As mentioned above, we recommend the support of patent attorneys and experts to achieve the best possible results.
• AI not yet integrated: We do not yet use AI in our own research function, i.e. our research function does not yet provide you with synonyms for terms or similar search queries.

But: The integration of our AI actually goes one step further and tends to make the patent search even more efficient.
For this, a short excursion into our AI approach - a separate blog entry is already planned for this:

Excursus PATOffice AI

Our AI, we call it PIA, is a tool that screens the complete patent landscape. Without the definition of specific search terms, such as applicant, title, claims etc.. Our PIA uses the data collected during the patent evaluation of our clients. But don't worry - only the data of our own patent evaluation is used. This means that our customers evaluate patents, we train PIA with them and PIA screens all patents worldwide and draws our attention to exactly those that could be relevant for us - and all this is based only on your own evaluations.

Sounds exciting? Then feel free to take a look directly at our AI webinar. We have already recorded it 🙂