Birds-Eye.Net Patent Search & Management Services Review

Patent Search & Management Services Review
A detailed look at your global patent search and management options

By: Bruce Bahlmann - Contributing Author (your feedback is important to us!)

Birds-Eye.Net offers a Patent Harvesting Starter Kit to help you and your company start your own successfully patent harvesting program.

Performing a prior art search on a possible patent idea and managing a large portfolio are getting much easier these days thanks to a handful of full service patent software companies. The problem is, they are not all created equally so here is an introductory review of available search services, patent portfolio management software, as well as information about free alternatives that come in handy in the event your patent search needs are only temporary.

If you find you may need ongoing prior art searches, you should begin considering a subscription to a patent search service. Patent search services provide maximum convenience, allow you to track your search time, and track any costs associated with patent searches in order for you to charge back clients. Table 1.0 provides a high level overview of the major search services alongside the patent databases they are able to search. The three most common are USPTO (US), PCT (Europe), and JPO (Japan).

Table 1.0 Search services covering major international patent databases (as of 2005)

It is good to know that pretty much every piece of data that any of the patent search firms provides for a fee can be obtained for free directly from the respective authority’s web site. However, the functionality of these search services varies greatly across these free sites. Also, not all of them are in English or have translations to English, so that could also become an obstacle. Free patent search services also tend to not break out the text of patents in chunks that could be used to ascertain the value or legitimacy of a patent. For example, many search services count claims and some even break them out in terms of independent method claims and independent system claims. Some patent search services continually track the forward and reverse references relative to each patent and provide detailed family information. Free services only break out the major sections of the patent text – but in their defense this is usually all that is really needed. In Table 2.0 we have provided an overview of some of the most popular patent databases around the world, about how many records each holds, and what if any free patent search services are available for this database.

	Records (Approx)	Searches
AU - Australia		apa.hpa.com.au
CH - Switzerland		www.ige.ch
CIPO (CA) – Canadian Intellectual Property Office	800,000	patents.ic.gc.ca
DPMA (DE) – German Patent and Trademark Office	1.7 million	depatisnet.dpma.de
EPO (EP) – European Patent Office	1.5 million (EP-A) 625,000 (EP-B)	ep.espacenet.com register.epoline.org
INPI (FR) – France Institute of Intellectual Property	375,000
IPOS (SG) – Intellectual Property Office of Singapore		www.ipos.gov.sg
JPO-IPDL (JP/JAPIO) – Japan Patent Office	10.7 million	ipdl.ncipi.go.jp
PCT (EU) – Patent Cooperation Treaty	103,000
UKPO (GB) – UK Patent Office	385,000
USPTO (US) – United States Patent and Trademark Office	7 million (granted) 500,000 (applications)	www.uspto.gov www.patdocs.org patents.cos.com www.freepatentsonline.com www.patentcomplete.com
Taipei IP (TW) – Taiwan Intellectual Property	254,000	www.tipo.gov.tw
WIPO (WO) – World Intellectual Property Organization	835,000	www.wipo.int

These patent databases contain a bulk of all the patents globally and represent a majority of the patent agencies that recognize intellectual property. With that said, there are a number of countries where it really doesn’t matter if you hold a patent on something in their country where as in other countries, having such intellectual property can hold tremendous value. The patent databases listed in this review all offer patent holders value. A number of other countries including Columbia and China do not provide much if any value to the patent holder. Table 3.0 provides a helpful guide to list prices for patent search services.

Vendor	Type	List Pricing (as of July 2005)

Delphion	Subscription	$99/user/month (unlimited downloads) $249/user/month (additional users)
PatentCafe	Subscription	$5,500/user/year (limited 10,000 downloads)
PatentHunter	Subscription	$99/user/year
SurfIP	Subscription	$285/user/year
QPAT	Subscription	$10,000/user/year (unlimited downloads) $1,000/user/year (additional users)

If your company manages a large portfolio of patents, you may want to seek out software that helps you manage your portfolio. Some of these products are listed below alongside available list pricing where available.

Vendor	Product	Pricing (as of July 2005)

CPi	Patent Management System	$15,000 for 5 users, $1,400/yr maintenance
FlexTrac	Corporate Professional Edition	$2,295 single user, $500/additional user
IPDOX	Asset Management
MDC	IPMaster

Depending on the size of the portfolio, there are a number a handful of companies that specialize in data mining tools for drawing more complex associations among the patents you are managing. Some of these data mining tools include:

Data mining tools allow you to look for trends among very large data sets and pull out complex relationships that would be difficult to find under normal reports. A number of patent search services also offer something called an XML Gateway. An XML Gateway offers companies the ability to search and retrieve patent records from a search company’s database without the use of a browser. As a result, the XML Gateway acts as a type of Application Programming Interface (API) for larger patent law firms to programmatically monitor changes in their portfolio or perform very customize searches and reporting that ties in their internally managed portfolio. Many patent search companies are beginning to offer an XML Gateway to their customers including:

For those companies wanting to seek value in patents held in foreign countries a foreign patent agent may be required to help license this technology to foreign companies.

Alternatively, if you don’t want to do patent searches or manage patents yourself, you can always seek out a quality law firm to help you. The following provides a listing of possible firms that could help you with prior art searches or managing your portfolio.

Clearly there are a number of different choices when it comes to patent searches and patent portfolio management tools. Probably the reason there are so many is because there are just so many different clients with different needs. What is unique in this industry is that when you find you have a need that doesn’t seem to be met by current software or services, all you have to do is ask. In a recent survey of search services while inquiring about their support for an XML Gateway many of the vendors said we don’t have that but would be happy to build it for you. The next this I knew I was talking to their developer who was ready to build anything I wanted – and I had not yet paid them a penny. The larger the search service, however the less willing they are to work with you or even meet you half way.