World Patent Information, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 57-58, 1990. Maxwell Online Inc. Printed in Great Britain.

Literature Review

Abstracts and reviews collected by the International Bureau of WIPO during a scanning of journals concerned with infor- mation retrieval and patent information.

1. Image processing case studies in the patent field. J. P. Dintzner. OIS Znter- national 1989. Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Conference on Optical Informa- tion Systems. pp. 189-192, 1989. The European Patent Office (EPO) can be considered as an intensive information handling factory. Thus, a long term plan has been initiated to automate the storage and handling of documentation. Various pilot tests have been established which mcorporate ontical and image nroces- sing iechnology. Two of the& tests are outlined in the paper: JIMA (Japanese images) devised to display the test and images of the patents abstracts of Japan, and ELFOS (Electronic filing operating system) which deals with the idministra- tion of European patent applications.

2. Online data banks: search for patent information. M. Zach. Funkschau (West Germany), No. 14, pp. 36-38, June 1989. A general introduction is given to online data banks usage, with some notes on technical problems with modems, of main interest are five statistical dia- grams, showing the still modest use of data banks as the primary source of information; the knowledge sources of the banks themselves; the main users of data banks; the data share according to industry, economy, science, etc.; and users’ comments of data banks perfor- mance , assessed by nine parameters, like ease of operation, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

3. Patents in non-patent databases: bioscience specialty files, Database (U.S.A.). B. Snow. Database (U.S.A.), Vol. 12, No. 5, pp. 4148, October 1989. Patents are major source of information about new products, processes and uses. Monitoring patent hterature can help scientists identify trends and patterns, as well as gaps, in overall research efforts. Subject-oriented databases can provide screening and selection of patents poten- tially relevant to a speciality area, and indexing of their contents using language already familiar to researchers as access points to the journal literature online. And, by adding patent coverage to their scope, life science database suppliers provide users with information usually inaccessible in the iournal literature until after its proprietary rights have been established. a nrocess that can take several days. The author lists selected bioscience online resources that include patent indexing. Access points available to searchers a;e identified? but supplier and data bank documentatron should be consulted to determine entry format. The

discussion highlights search capabilities and indexing characteristics, using dialog search examples.

4. The retrieval and display of patent images from optical storage. G. M. Kurtenbach. National Online Meetin . Proceedings - 1988, Learned In , f DD. 191-198. 1988. In 1984 the United %ates Patent and Trademark Office awarded a contract to automate its patent processing to planning research corporation, with Chemical Abstracts Service as a major subcontractor. The svstem is designed to store an estimated 3’0 trillion by& of compressed, digitized image data for the U.S. and foreign patents on optical media. Users of the system view patent images on high resolution, full-uaee disolav screens of customized work&ions: The system design provides for patent images to be stored on two types of devices: storage units containing per- manently mounted optical platters, and optical jukebox type units. The various hardware components of the system are connected by a high speed, ethernet-based local area network. Chemical Abstracts Service has developed software to retrieve patent images from the optical media across the local area network for display on user workstations. The paper discusses the status of the efforts to provide the capa- bility to retrieve and display patent images as part of the automated patent system.

5. A svstem of search and analvsis of patent &formation on chemical structures. R. S. Niamatullin. A. L. Osioov and N. A. Karpova. &‘auchno-Tekh. Inf. 2 (U.S.S.R.), Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 14-17, 1989. A concept of a system for accumu- lation, searching, and analvsis of chemi- cal, structural, land biological data from natents is described. The svstem is built as an element of a test simulator for algorithms predicting biological activity of multiatomic molecules; their action dosages, test objects, etc. search capa- bilities are based on application pro- gram packages, such as ASOD Dialog-2, and others.

6. A patently obvious source for competi- tor intelligence: the patent literature. M. Oiala. Database (U.S.A.). Vol. 12. No. 4: pp. 43-49, August 1989. The author argues that patenifiles are a poten- tiallv valuable source of competitor infor- mation. She discusses: the’back round of patents, patent databases, tra & rtronal patent searches, inventor searches, tech- nology tracking, and business databases.

7. Retrieval, dissemination and proces- sine of oatent information. F. Jakobiak. Nazonai Online meeting. Proceedings - 1989, Learned Inf., pp. 203-11, 1989. The considerable importance of patent information for the preparation of a strategic information package for the CEO or to monitor the technological environment leads to a systematic use of this information source. It means that the I and D specialist ought to have a strategy to make the best possible use of the online patent databases. The article presents such a strategy and covers the three main chapters considered: retrieval,

dissemination and processing of patent information.

8. Use of a PC to search in Japanese online databases. W. Pilch. NationaiOnline Meet- ing. Proceedings - 1988, Learned Inf. pp. 315-325, 1988. Japanese hardware with all the options to display Kana and Kanii characters is not widelv used outside Japan. Therefore it is necessary, that the software involved works with hardware which is generally acce ted as a standard in western countries. 8. rsplay of printout of online information in the Japanese language has to be passed on to the interpreter, d textual information is necessary. For highly standardized texts, like the detailed btbhographic data shown in the Patolis database of JAPIO, the PC is a good translation tool. Phrases and bibliographic facts are sent from the database in Kanji characters, but are translated bv the PC into English. In this Ja

Y anesk patent database Searches

for bib toaranhic data and for the leeal status of a” document can be carried &t even by people who cannot speak and read Japanese.

9. Learning algorithms for automatic content access. A. Mahl. Wiss. 2. Tech. Hochsch. Ilmenau (East Germany), Vol. 35. No. 5. DD. 129-133.1989. There is a scbpe for* &automatic ’ methods in utilizing patent literature, including clas- sification and evaluation methods based on counts of keywords.

10. Patentsasinformationsourcesforenter- prises. Applications of statistical analysis in online searches. V. H. Salvatierra. Rev. Esp. Dot. Cient. (Spain), Vol 12, No. 2. DD. 141-153. The usefulness of the sta&tical analysis of representative groups of patents as an information source regarding technological policies of companies is presented. Techniques are described which are based on retrieving (by online access to databases), repre- sentative grou s of patent records and carrying out t l? err statistical analysis by using snecific commands developed bv the hosi or the patent statistics software PATSTAT develoned bv Derwent Pub- lications. Analysis’ of some companies (IBM, Scott Paper, Zanussi) and some technological fields are also given.

11. Information from patents - an over- view of recent activities. M. Hill. Online Rev. (U.K.), Vol. 13,No. 3,pp. 19%204, June 1989. Published patent documents continue to pour out unabated. The paper looks at recent developments, including the continuing progress of the EPO, JPO and USPTO m working towards automated search systems and document management the efforts of the WIPO in the area of standardization within the patent office, the formation of OLPI, and the continuing growth of patent databases. The paper also looks at the situation of information services in developing countries.

57