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You don’t just save time and money because you can search more effectively within your data collection using SOPHIA but because you improve your decision making processes as a result of understanding what that information means.

SOPHIA Advantage

Conventional search is reasonably good at the task of recovering information that you know exists. That is when you know the terms to use to find it. Where it disappoints is when you are looking for information whose existence you are unaware of. It is extremely poor at discovering relevant information not exactly specified by your query. SOPHIA addresses this problem.

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Patents

Task

Last Updated (Tuesday, 09 December 2008 16:36)

1) Why search patent data?

There are a number of reasons as to why it is important to be able to search through Patent information effectively.

Prior Art Search

The aim with this type of search is to identify all patents relating to a particular invention. Therefore in its most general form the scope is quite wide and can result in many search results. The results can be reduced in size somewhat by filtering on certain fields, for example, specifying specific time periods, companies or inventors and so on.

Patentability search

Here the objective is to identify patents that will help you establish the patentability of your own invention by assessing both its novelty and non-obviousness. This helps you determine the viability of your idea and whether spending money to protect it is sensible.

Validity Search

This type of search is deployed whenever you are interested in investigating the claims (validity) of a particular patent. Here the object is to find patents that predate the filing date of the patent in question in order to assess the validity of those claims. Each claim can be searched independently.

Infringement Search

The aim of this search is to identify if your invention infringes an existing patent therefore allowing you to assess the risk of legal action being taken against you. It is not uncommon for the costs associated with loosing such a case being in the region of half a billion dollors.

Right to Use

With this type of search you generally want to find out if your invention will infringe any currently protected patents thereby preventing you from using it. Additionally you may want to search expired patents to determine if the invention is already public knowledge.

State of the Art Search

The objective here is to find patents that reflect the current state of the art in your proposed area of work.

Competitor analysis

This is useful to understand what your competitors are doing and can provide insight to their future research directions.

Assess patent portfolios, for your organization

Perhaps you want to assess the patent portfolio for your current employer.

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Sophiasearch - making meaning from content