Patent Law

Patent Searching is Not Just Semantics

By Stephen Albainy-Jenei

There are a number of patent search sites available today.  A new one is a semantic patent search — searching by meaning or interpretation of terms — called Setrue Semantic Patent Search Engine by Transformer.

Setrue touts itself as an answer to the growing need of patent search market to a search engine with semantic capabilities that will enhance the precision of search results as contrast to the current FTS engines (full text search engine).

Currently, the engine contains patents and patent applications from the USPTO — EPO patents with weekly updates and more databases will be acquired in the near future. Setrue Semantic Patent Search system includes:

1.    A natural language query capabilities.
2.    Query auto-complete suggestions.
3.    A detailed class directory structure enabling a one click segmentation of search results to a specific patent class.
4.    A dynamic clustering of search results by classes
5.    A dynamic clustering of search results by years
6.    A dynamic clustering of search results by assignees.
7.    Similar patents segmentation.
8.    A dynamic weighting of search terms
9.    Highlighting of search terms in documents
and more.

Setrue claims its mission is to strengthen the online connection between inventors/entrepreneurs/companies and the professional IP service providers like law firms and individual attorneys.

But Setrue seems to also be in competition with those same professional services providers by offering expert patent searching, patent opinions and even provisional patent filings (as we’ve mentioned with other providers using this model, we’re not sure everyone would understand all the trade-offs of provisional applications).

Setrue’s business model is not based on advertisements but is based on dividing its potential target audience into two groups:

The first one is the professional audience including law firms, private lawyers, patent search agencies, litigation lawyers and corporations that will be asked to acquire a license deal that will include a commercial license to use the search system, targeted advertisement and redirection of patent services requested by inventors.

The second target audience is the private inventors, entrepreneurs and companies that get free usage of the system, access to professional services offered by the site’s professionals, and direct access to professionals’ sites.

You can try it yourself here:

See the Setrue Semantic Patent Search Engine here.

Full post as published by Patent Baristas on November 16, 2008 (boomark / email).