PORTAL

World’s most targeted full-text search now available for US and EP patents

Unified’s Portal now includes full-text patent search for all US and EP Patents and Applications in its Patent Search Tool. For the first time, users can filter by Description, Claims, Abstract, Title, and Non-Patent Citations. This allows for much more precise prior art searching, competitive landscape analysis, and to identify innovation opportunities. 

If you are not logged in, you will only see one result page. Logged-in users have complete access to results for a limited time. 

The full-text search takes advantage of Apache Lucene and allows for a number of Boolean operators to help expand or narrow a given search. In addition to boolean searching, Portal takes full advantage of Boosting, Fuzzy Searching, and Proximity Searching that allows users to find state of the art documents when conducting a search. 

With the combination of the boolean search, applying different search strategies, and having the ability to narrow down the search within different parts of the patents, users will have greater granularity and can find state of the art documents relevant to their needs faster.

Example: IEEE 802.11ax and OFDMA (Boosting)

A user would like to find references that cite not only IEEE 802.11ax but also OFDMA. The user would use the + sign, like ‘IEEE 802.11ax^4' + 'OFDMA' and would result in 93 patents. In addition, if the user wanted to remove patents that contained Medium Access Control or MAC, then the user would type ('IEEE 802.11ax^4' + "OFDMA') NOT ('Medium Access Control' or 'MAC). This would allow the search to find everything that contains 802.11ax and OFDMA but exclude the Medium Access Control. This would result in 11 patents. 

Example: Physical Layer (Fuzzy Search)

The user would like to limit the search to claims only and look for patents related to the Physical Layer. The search string would be "Physical Layer"~. This syntax will find the phrase Physical Layer but also uses a fuzzy search. Portal supports fuzzy searches based on the Levenshtein Distance, or Edit Distance algorithm. To do a fuzzy search, use the tilde, "~" symbol at the end of a single word term. This resulted in over 9,000 patents being found. 

If the user wanted to narrow the search to user equipment and place greater emphasis on the user equipment, the syntax would be "Physical Layer"~ + "user equipment"^4. This would result in 1,121 patents. If the inverse wanted to be found, then the user could use "Physical Layer"~ NOT "user equipment"^4 which results in 429 patents. Note that if a full-text search is done using the same syntax, then it results in over 10,000 patents. 

Having the ability to create fuzzy searches also allows the user to tune it. The value is between 0 and 1, and with a value closer to 1, only terms with a higher similarity will be matched. The default on fuzzy searching is typically set to 0.5. For instance, using "Physical Layer"~0.7+ "user equipment"^4 results in 1,050 patents. 

Example: Physical Layer (Proximity Search)

The user wants to find the term User Equipment five words away from the term Physical Layer. The input would be "Physical Layer"~5+"user equipment"^4 and the result would be 2,499 patents. 

Boosting, Fuzzy Searches, and Proximity Searches allow users to strategically craft a search that will create relevant search results. This could be expanded to look for a specific claim and elements within that claim. If the search criteria was to look for a method claim that delivers a signal, a search could be done like "method delivering"~4+"signal". This search is looking to find delivering and method within four words of each and also signal in the claim language. This specific search results in 1,601 patents. Both these operators can help reduce the noise of searching and find relevant information. 

For more information, visit the support page or visit Portal.

World's Largest Wi-Fi 6 Training Set Used in First Ever AI-derived Landscape

Unified's OPAL (Objective PAtent Landscape) report was designed to address asymmetries in the licensing of standard essential patents and to create a more fair and transparent patent licensing process around core patents supporting next waves of consumer technology growth.

According to OPEN, Unified Patents’ IEEE standards submissions database, over 7,182 technical contributions have been submitted. These top 10 contributors account for 27% of all technical contributions.

The Wi-Fi 6 “OPAL” tool objectively scores the statistical essentiality of patent publications to Wi-Fi 6 functionality. It was created using a machine learning algorithm trained on a large set of expert reviewed Wi-Fi 6 patents. A short summary of OPAL’s methodology follows:

  • Universe of Patents Subject to Analysis - 3.6M+ applications and granted patents potentially relevant to Wi-Fi 6

  • Patents Evaluated Manually by Experts - 3,000+ unique families evaluated manually by technical experts at Scintillation Research

  • AI Training - Patents were vectorized using FastText, and a binary classification algorithm was trained to predict essentiality to the universe of patents

  • ML Performance - Training complied with accepted machine learning practices and the results achieved a high F-1 score of 0.99

Read more about Wi-Fi 6 OPAL’s report and methodology HERE. If you have any questions, please contact info@unifiedpatents.com.

Unified Patents Launches IETF OPEN

Unified Patents is pleased to announce OPEN’s IETF Standard Submission Portal. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is largely responsible for how the internet operates and is vitally important to how various devices use the internet. Common areas of focus for the IETF include Internet Protocols, APIs, and Routing, (i.e. architecture and backbone of how the internet works). Users can now search all the submissions related to IETF via full-text or by author and source. The submission portal includes over 86,000 documents that are full-text searchable.

The internet standards process includes proposing specifications, developing standards based on agreed-upon specifications, coordinating independent testing and revising proposals based on testing results.

In addition to the ability to search, Portal provides high-level analytics to provide transparency and clarity on submissions to better improve the Internet. Users have the availability to understand the landscape clearly based on the search criteria.

World’s most comprehensive Opposition data now available

Unified Patents’ Portal now includes foreign opposition data with access to the dockets. At the current moment the data covers the United Kingdom, Germany, European Patent Office, and Japan. Specifically portal includes:

Users can now filter down by specific forum using the sidebar.

Once a given jurisdiction is selected, the Patent List will display all patents involved in an opposition in that jurisdiction.

From there, Users can select a given patent and view the docket with links to the actual documents.

Users will also have high-level analytics to understand the filings over time and top parties.

Tracking Innovation: Using Unified’s Portfolio Velocity Tool

Unified’s Portal has added a new component to its Portfolio analysis tab that allows companies to be compared in terms of accelerated or decelerated innovation based on CPC codes.

Innovation Velocity uses two key metrics: ▲ Velocity - the total sum of patents per class code within the last 10 years; and ▲% Velocity - the percentage of change over a given time period. The Innovation Velocity formula is:

 
 

The Final Number of Patents specifically looks at years 2017-2022, while the Initial Number of Patents looks at years 2012-2022. By using these parameters, the tool is able to overcome the natural “dark period” of time within the U.S. patenting process. The dark period refers to the 18 months from which an application is filed to the day it is published. These 18 months make it extremely difficult to understand a portfolio’s trajectory because naturally there will be a decline in publicly available application/patent information. By using the formula, the most recent years are aggregated together to get a holistic view of the number of patents over a given time period and measured against the previous years. This provides a glimpse to either the growth or the decline in a specific classification code.

As an example, we can compare Bank of America’s portfolio against JP Morgan Chase in terms of patenting trends, The Innovation Velocity tool allows users to see the general patenting trends for the top CPC codes, with the total being aggregated. Included are the CPC, ▲ Velocity, ▲% Velocity and a ten year graph to show the general trend.

Users then can see the number of patents granted, within each CPC, on the timeline over a specific time period. The patent count is hyperlinked back to Portal’s Patent Search where more analysis could be done on the set of patents.

Users can also view the macro trends of a company, but looking at all the top CPCs and see an aggregate total for the entire company.

Since CPCs tend to be generic and broad, Unified’s Portal provides the same analysis on the CPC Subclass.

Innovation Velocity not only helps companies understand their specific portfolio, but this tool allows users to compare their portfolio with others to understand both the macro and micro trends of their patenting strategy.