JP2007242005A - Patent information processing system, patent information processing method, patent information processing program, and storage medium recording patent information processing program - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To obtain information for determining whether prior-art search performed in the past for an invention for patent application was appropriate or not. <P>SOLUTION: A patent information processing system 2 includes a means accumulating search results of prior-art literature search for an invention of a search object; a means accumulating cited literatures cited in an examination in the Patent Office for the invention; and a means comparing a technical literature that is a search result with each cited literature to determine the matching degree thereof. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2007,JPO&INPIT

Description

  This invention is a patent information processing that provides information for objectively evaluating the quality of prior art searches such as known examples, prior applications, etc. that are conducted before a patent application, before filing an application request, etc. About the system.

  Prior to the filing of a patent application, it is a common practice to conduct a survey (prior art search) on the existence of prior art materials and documents related to the invention to be applied.

  In the past, prior art searches were conducted by manually searching for paper materials such as patent gazettes and abstracts, but now patent databases are technical terms (so-called technical terms), IPC, FI, In most cases, a search is performed by using a logical operation search expression appropriately combining search keys such as F-term and applicant. In this case, the creation of the search formula greatly affects the quality of the prior art search. In particular, creating a search expression that includes a logical operation expression using a technical term requires technical knowledge in the technical field and knowledge of the patent database to be used. A high level of proficiency is required.

In order to alleviate the above-mentioned requirements, Patent Document 1 describes that information that is obtained by narrowing down information in a field to be searched in advance by a person familiar with the search technique, It is described that it is possible to obtain target patent information by performing a secondary search using a group.
Further, Patent Document 2 describes that comments that make a pair with searched information can be accumulated and referenced in order to share user search know-how (search conditions and the like).

JP 2004-355546 A (Abstract, FIG. 1) JP 2004-280488 A (Abstract, FIG. 1)

  When conducting prior art searches by searching patent databases, it is important to improve the accuracy and quality of the search. However, the current situation is that there is not always a clear standard in terms of how to measure the accuracy and quality of search. When the subject of the prior art search is an invention related to a patent application, the present inventors shall obtain the prior art material obtained by the prior art search and the prior art material cited in the examination at the Patent Office. By contrast, I thought that the accuracy and quality of prior art searches could be measured. Of course, there is no guarantee that the citation examples in the examination are all prior art. However, considering that the primary purpose of a patent application is that the invention of the application passes the examination and receives a patent, the cited example in the examination is whether the prior art search was appropriate or not. It can be a test stone.

  The purpose of the present invention is to determine whether the prior art search conducted in the past for the invention relating to the patent application was appropriate or not, based on such background, the results of the prior art search and the patent application. To provide a patent information processing system, a patent information processing method, a patent information processing program, and a recording medium on which the patent information processing program is recorded that compares the cited example cited in the examination made and outputs the result .

  In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, in the invention of claim 1, means for accumulating data of prior art documents extracted as a result of investigating a prior example for a search target technology, and an application corresponding to the search target technology in the JPO Provided is a patent information processing system having means for accumulating data of cited references cited in examination, means for matching the prior art document data with the cited reference data, and means for outputting the result of the matching To do.

  According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided a patent information processing system characterized in that, in the patent information processing system according to the first aspect, a target to be matched is selected by a quoting text used in examination at the JPO. .

  Further, in the invention of claim 3, the data of the prior art documents extracted as a result of searching the prior examples for the search target technology are accumulated, and the citation cited in the examination at the Patent Office for the application corresponding to the search target technology. Provided is a patent information processing method characterized by matching with literature data and outputting the result.

  Further, in the invention of claim 4, a step of accumulating data of prior art documents extracted as a result of investigating a prior example with respect to a search target technology, and a citation cited in examination at the Patent Office for an application corresponding to the search target technology There is provided a patent information processing program comprising a step of matching document data with the data of the prior art document and a step of outputting the result of the matching.

  Further, in the invention of claim 5, a step of accumulating data of prior art documents extracted as a result of investigating a prior example with respect to a technology to be searched, and a citation cited in an examination at the Patent Office for an application corresponding to the technology to be searched Provided is a recording medium on which a patent information processing program having a step of matching document data with the data of the prior art document and a step of outputting the matching result is recorded.

  According to the present invention, it is possible to compare the prior art extracted as a result of the prior art search with the prior art cited in the examination at the Patent Office, and to determine the degree of coincidence between them. Information can be obtained.

  Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

  FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a concept of a patent information integration system. In the patent information integration system, the patent management system 1 receives a notification of an invention generated in the company by the department in charge of intellectual property in the company, evaluates the importance of the invention, and applies for a patent in Japan, overseas or region. It is a computer system for managing matters related to patents, such as requesting examination of applications, performing intermediate procedures from registration to registration, paying patent fees, and utilizing patent rights.

The patent search system 2 is a system for accumulating the results of conducting a prior art search (patent search) on the generated invention and inquiring or searching the accumulated results. In addition to patent search results for inventions, this patent search system 2 also stores results such as patent searches for grasping the technical situation at the time of research and development, trends in other patents, and effectiveness searches for certain patent rights. These queries and searches are possible. For example, it has a search for similar surveys conducted in the past, history management of surveys conducted in the past, and statistical processing functions for surveys.
The patent information retrieval system 3 is a system that has a patent database and performs patent retrieval using a logical operation retrieval formula and accumulates official data such as organized standardized data of the JPO.

  The above-mentioned patent management system 1, patent search system 2, and patent information search system 3 share information by cooperation between servers, and the same information does not require double input in each system. .

  Examples of inter-server cooperation are as follows. From the patent management system 1, the subject matter of the patent search and its information (sheet, description, drawing, etc. describing the invention to be searched) are written in the patent search system 2 as a search instruction. A person who conducts a patent search (searcher) accesses the patent search system 2 to find out a list of cases that require a patent search from an unprocessed case list displayed on a personal computer (PC) screen. Then, one of the cases is selected, the contents of the search are obtained from the case information, a patent search is performed using the patent information search system 3 and the like, and the result is uploaded to the patent search system 2. The search result (at least the search completion information) is written in the patent management system 1.

  The patent search system 2 is linked to the patent information search system 3, displays the patent search report uploaded to the patent search system 2 on the user PC screen, and the prior document number (patent number) described in the report. When the number is clicked on the screen, the information is passed from the patent search system 2 to the patent information search system 3 as a reference data verification instruction, and the reference information of the number from the patent information search system 3 is patent search as reference data. The inquiry information is displayed on the PC screen of the user who has been passed to the system 2 and clicked on the patent number. In this way, information sharing is performed as if the document information of the patent information search system 3 is in the patent search system 2, and the document information (patent gazette information, etc.) of the patent search result is stored in the patent search system. ), The user does not feel inconvenience.

  The patent management system 1 also stores reference information for examination at the Patent Office for patent applications to be managed. Based on this reference information, a reference data verification instruction is issued to the patent information retrieval system 3 according to the user's instruction, and the reference data is returned to allow the user of the patent management system 1 to receive the reference contents (abstract, application, description, (Drawing / summary).

  FIG. 1 shows a case where a search result analysis tool 4 is connected to the patent information search system 3. The search result analysis tool 4 uses the search result of the patent information search system 3 to perform patent analysis such as patent portfolio analysis in accordance with a user instruction.

FIG. 2 is a diagram schematically showing the stage in which the patent management system 1 and the patent search system 2 cooperate.
In FIG. 2, before the start of the research 10, before the start of the research (patent) search 2-1, before the filing of the invention, the pre-invention search 2-2, before the filing of the patent, the pre-application search 2-3, Before the request for examination, a pre-examination request search 2-4, a patent right validity investigation 11 at the stage of patent right utilization 11 and a third party patent countermeasure stage 12 at the stage of the patent right countermeasure investigation 2-6 Do.

  FIG. 3 is a system configuration diagram of this embodiment. The patent research system 2 includes a main server 21 and a WEB server 22. The user accesses the patent search system 2 from the user PC 61 via the network 5.

FIG. 3 shows a form in which the WEB server and the main server are connected by a dedicated line when the main server of the patent search system 2 is not directly connected to the network.
In addition to such a configuration, the main server 21 may be directly connected to the network 5 as shown in FIG. In FIG. 11, 211 is a program for executing the processing of the flowcharts of FIGS. Further, as in another embodiment shown in FIG. 12, the main server and the WEB server may physically coexist in one server 20.
In FIG. 3, the security of the main server is high, and there is an effect that the communication speed between the WEB server and the main server is not influenced by the traffic of the network 5. In FIG. 11, both the WEB server and the main server can utilize existing servers, and there is an effect that each can be shared with other systems. In FIG. 12, there is an effect that the initial introduction / maintenance cost is low.

  The patent search result is composed of bibliographic data including text and code information and image information such as a search report (including a search expression). Bibliographic data includes a number for identifying a patent search, a number for identifying the invention that was the subject of the search (reception number, application number, etc.), and the number of the patent document that is the prior art extracted in the patent search (published) Number, etc.). The patent search result data / information created by the searcher using the user PC 61 is stored and accumulated in the patent search result file 211 assigned to the hard disk in the main server 21 via the WEB server 22.

The creation procedure of the result number file 212 and the agency reference file 213 shown in FIG. 3 will be described with reference to FIG.
A search result file search is executed for the patent search result file 211 in which the patent search results are accumulated as described above (2101). This search is performed by the operator specifying the search target period (the period of the surveyed year, etc.), the search target number, the search target researcher name (searcher), etc. via the user PC 61. It is. By this search, data such as the number of the search item to be searched, the application number of the invention to be searched, the number of the patent document extracted as a result of the patent search, the report date of the patent search, and the like are extracted.

Next, number file writing is executed (2102), and the information extracted in the file search 2101 is written into the result number file 212.
Of the search results stored in the patent search result file 211, a number for identifying the search is assigned as the number of the target case, but the application number data for the search target invention is not recorded. In cooperation with the patent management system described in 1, the application number of the case is provided from the patent management system.

Next, by operating the PC 61 in FIG. 3, the number information (application number, etc.) is sent to the patent information retrieval system via the network 5 based on the application number corresponding to the search case written in the result number file 212. The database is searched in the patent information search system in which the patent office organization standardized data is stored (2103). In decision 2104, it is determined whether or not there is a reference in the application standardization data of the application number. If there is a case that has a reference, the reference information is written in the office reference file together with the application number (2105). An agency reference file 213 is created.
That is, when a case (application number etc.) to be compared between the search result and the reference is specified on the PC 61, the application number etc. is transferred from the result number file 212 to the patent information search system and enters the patent information search system. Data matching such as the application number with the organized standardization data is performed, and if there is an application number or the like where there is a reference, the application number and the reference number data are stored in the office reference file 213.

  As mentioned above, this agency reference file creation work may be performed via the network each time, or the application number list is given to the operator of the patent information search system so that the reference information is obtained together. Also good.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart for performing comparison (data matching) between the agency reference and the survey result and obtaining the result in the form of a list. The result number file 212 and the office reference file 213 are subjected to data matching by application number to make a match determination (2111), and the search result, the office reference, the extracted document of the search result and the office reference match for each application number. In this case, the intermediate file 1 including the document number (reference number) is created (2112). This intermediate file 1 is created in the main server 21.
Judgment is made based on the patent number (publication number, registration number, application number, public notice number) of the office reference and the number of patent search results (publication number, registration number, application number, public notice number). It is more certain that the match determination is performed by unifying the application numbers. For example, if the agency reference is a registered number, a match result cannot be determined by the number if the survey result is a public number. If the application number of the registration number case of the agency reference is compared with the application number of the public number case of the search result, it is possible to reliably determine the coincidence. In this case, the application number is available from the standardized data.

A clause check is performed using the quote clause code in the standardized data included in the intermediate file 1 (2113). In this article check, grounds such as notice of reasons for refusal in examination at the JPO, those related to the novelty / inventive step of the invention are subject to selection, the description is incomplete, etc., and it does not fall under novelty / inventive step Items are not selected. A case including the article code relating to novelty and inventive step is selected, and the intermediate file 2 is created (2114). This intermediate file 2 is created in the user PC 61. By creating the intermediate file 2 in the user PC 61, there is an effect that a chart using the data of the intermediate file 2 can be quickly created. Whether this clause check is performed after the match determination or before it may be performed.
The article code is published in the code table of JPO organization standardization, and a part of the code is shown in FIG.

The list for coincidence analysis shown in FIG. 6 is created using the information obtained from the intermediate file 2 (2115).
In FIG. 6, when the publication number of the survey result and the publication number of the agency reference match, “1” is written in the “matched” column in the table. The matched publication number is written in the “matched document” column.

This list makes it easy to identify which patent search cases the search results and agency references match. In the example of FIG. 6, “1” is written in the “Matched” column of the case No. 1, and it can be seen that the case number 1 matches at least one document of the agency reference. In the “matched material” column, the matched material number is specifically shown.
From a microscopic viewpoint, the invention to be investigated and the invention to be examined may differ due to amendment of claims. Even if the publication number of the survey result and the publication number of the agency reference do not match, the disclosure content of both may be the same. Although such a situation cannot be grasped from the table itself in FIG. 6, it can be considered that the quality of the patent search using the agency reference as a test stone is expressed from a macro or statistical viewpoint.

  One example will be described. As shown in FIG. 7, a match rate table or graph can be created from the intermediate file 2. A coincidence rate table is shown in FIG. Figure 8 counts the number of “agency cited”, the number of “matched” and the ratio (match rate) of “matched” to “agency cited” for patent search cases in a search group with multiple searchers. The results are shown. In FIG. 8, two types of one year 1999 and five years 2000-2004 are shown. By comparing this match rate between different searchers, different survey groups, different survey companies, etc., it becomes possible to compare the quality of surveys in a macroscopic sense.

  FIG. 9 is a graph of the coincidence rate of FIG. By looking at the transition of the same survey group in terms of the coincidence rate in time series, you can see the transition in the quality of the survey as viewed macroscopically. In FIG. 9, since the coincidence rate is improved with the time of the survey, it can be seen that the quality of the survey as viewed macroscopically is improved.

In the above-described embodiments, examples of domestic patents are shown, but foreign patents can be similarly implemented. In addition to patents, utility models, designs, and non-patent literature can be similarly considered.
In addition to the server hard disk described above, the storage medium storing the results of investigations of prior art patent documents, agency references, and patent information processing programs may be recording media such as DVDs and CD-ROMs.

  According to the present invention, information for objectively evaluating the quality of a prior art search can be obtained, which is a useful technique for improving the quality of a prior art search.

It is an image figure of a patent integrated system. It is a figure which illustrates cooperation with a patent management system and a patent search system. 1 is a system configuration diagram of an embodiment of the present invention. It is an agency reference file creation flowchart of the Example of this invention. It is a flow chart for creating coincidence analysis data between the agency reference and the investigation result of the embodiment of the present invention. It is a list | wrist for agreement analysis of the Example of this invention. It is a coincidence rate table and graph creation flowchart of the Example of this invention. It is a coincidence rate table example figure of the Example of this invention. It is an agreement rate graph illustration figure of the Example of this invention. It is a partial excerpt of the Article Code Table of JPO Organization Standardization Data. It is a system block diagram of the other Example of this invention. It is a system configuration | structure figure of other Example of this invention.

Explanation of symbols

1: Own patent management system 2: patent search information system 21: main body server 211 of patent search information system: patent search result file 212: patent search result number file 213: patent office reference file 22: patent search information system WEB Server 3: Patent information search system 4: Search result analysis tool 5: Network 61-69: Personal computer (PC)

Claims (5)

  Means for accumulating data of prior art documents extracted as a result of searching prior examples for the technology to be searched, means for accumulating data of cited documents cited in examination at the Patent Office for the application corresponding to the technology to be searched, A patent information processing system comprising means for performing matching between the prior art document data and the cited document data, and means for outputting a result of the matching.   2. The patent information processing system according to claim 1, wherein an object to be matched is selected based on a quotation used in examination at the Patent Office.   Accumulating the data of the prior art documents extracted as a result of investigating the prior examples for the search target technology, matching the data corresponding to the cited reference cited in the examination at the Patent Office for the application corresponding to the search target technology, The patent information processing method characterized by outputting the result.   The step of accumulating the data of the prior art documents extracted as a result of investigating the prior examples with respect to the search target technology, the data of the cited references cited in the examination at the Patent Office about the application corresponding to the search target technology, and the above prior art documents A patent information processing program comprising a step of matching with data and a step of outputting a result of the matching.   The step of accumulating the data of the prior art documents extracted as a result of investigating the prior examples with respect to the search target technology, the data of the cited references cited in the examination at the Patent Office about the application corresponding to the search target technology, and the above prior art documents A recording medium on which a patent information processing program having a step of matching with data and a step of outputting a result of the matching is recorded.

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