AmberBlog

As the quantity and value of patent filings, acquisition and litigation increases rapidly, there has been an big increase in the number of specialists offering services around the analysis of patents, including Ambercite. Both the clients and service providers use a number of terms in relation to these services, such as patent landscaping, mapping, searching or portfolio analytics/analysis  - and sometimes inconsistently. 

So what do these different terms mean, in our view?

1) Patent searching is exactly that, searching for patents that meet specific criteria and something that should be very familiar to most readers.  Patent searches are often divided into novelty searches (has a given technology been disclosed in the patent literature?) and Freedom to Operate (FTO, can I make or sell a specific product or service?) searches, which aim to understand if a given technology will infringe valid patents 

Patent searching is often by done by patent attorneys  and examiners, inventors, and companies monitoring their competitor's activities. The outputs of patent searches are often lists of relevant or potentially relevant patents.

2) Portfolio assessment (or portfolio analytics) is the process of ranking patents in a portfolio in an objective manner. This can be of particular interest to IP managers or owners who want an independent opinion on the relative quality of their patents. Alternatively they might want an independent opinion on their competitors patents, and how these compare to their patents. Parties looking to acquire patent portfolios might also be interested in portfolio analytics.

The outputs of portfolio analytics tend to be table of patent numbers, with details of each patent given including indicators show the objective assessment of each patent listed.

3) Patent landscaping (also known as patent mapping, or patent technology mapping) generally refers to the process of analysing a group of patents in a specific area of technology. The purpose of patent landscaping is generally to identify key trends in the data, such as clusters of activity within this set of patents, dominant owners, dominant source of technology (such as leading countries), leading inventors, leading patent classes, age profiles etc.

Patent landscaping tends to have particular attraction to larger companies trying to understand their relative competitive position in their technologies, the activities of their competitors and to identify key patents to acquire, license or design around. Other clients can include researchers and universities.

The outputs of patent landscaping can be reports, graphs, and in some cases maps showing the leading aspects of the technology.

These different processes are compared in the table below, which also shows the Ambercite products developed for each of these processes (and which are further described below).

How Ambercite can help with each of the above

Amberscope - patent searching

AmberScope has been developed by Ambercite to assist with patent searching. The challenge with all patent searching is to reduce the over 80 million patents to a manageable number. Traditionally this is done by filtering the patents using a combination of keywords and patent codes. In practice these keyword and patent codes can be inconsistently applied, and so AmberScope uses patent citation connections as an alternative means of finding patents similar to a starting patent. As a bonus, besides lists of relevant patents AmberScope also presents results in an intuitive graphical format.

An output from an AmberScope search is shown below. Further examples of AmberScope searches are found here.

AmberScore  - portfolio analytics

Many important patents tends to have many and deep forward and backward citations - and these cited patents in turn are connected to other important patents. AmberScore is Ambercite's formula for predicting the influence of a patent based on its citation connections.

AmberScore values can be easily obtained for any patent by looking up this patent in AmberScope. A portfolio review product is under development, and should be available soon. An example of an AmberScore value is shown in the image below (this particular patent, the key patent for the multi-billion dollar omeprazole drug, has an AmberScore value of 16, or 16 times the average AmberScore value for granted US patents).

Network Patent Analysis - Patent landscaping 

Ambercite's patent landscaping product is Network Patent Analysis (NPA), which unlike many other landscaping technology, both groups patents with similar patents and ranks them as well, based on their patent citation connections. 

The image below shows an output from an NPA study. The blue patents belonged to a client company, and the red patents to their competitors. Just like in AmberScope, larger patents are more important. Further examples of NPA projects are found here.

Back in March 2011 Ambercite and its partner Griffith Hack published a widely viewed patent landscape report of the smartphone patent wars, including a patent landscape map, part of which is reproduced below.

This report covered a broad range of areas, including a patent analysis on a Motorola (since acquired by Google) patent being asserted against Apple, US6246862 Sensor controlled user interface for portable communication device, invented by Grivas et al ('Grivas') . But at the time, we did not have our AmberScope search engine available for patent searching.

The patent itself concerns a function that should be familiar to many users of touchscreen based smartphones, namely how the touchscreen switches off when the phone is brought close to your body, such as when it is held up to your ear when making a phone call. In this way, body parts such as your ear are prevented from accidently hitting any of the virtual buttons normally found on a touchscreen during a call, and perhaps ending the call. Next time you are using a touchscreen phone to make a call, note how the screen blanks out when brought very close to your head - this is this function in action.

This function is obviously very important for touchscreen phones, and so the patent could have been a key Google patent in the smartphone patent wars.

In its ruling published 22 April 2013, the United States International Trade Commission has found in relation to this dispute that claim 1 of Grivas:

1. A portable communication device comprising:

 a processing section to control operation of the portable communication device in response to an input signal;

 a user interface comprising a touch sensitive input device coupled to the processing section, the touch sensitive input device actuatable to generate the input signal; and

 a sensor coupled to the user interface, the sensor to disable communication of the input signal to the processing section when the portable communication device is positioned in close proximity to a user, thereby, preventing inadvertent actuation of the touch sensitive input device.

was infringed by Apple - but that this claim was obvious in view of Motorola owned US6052464 Telephone set having a microphone for receiving or an earpiece for generating an acoustic signal via a keypad (first inventor Harris, hereafter 'Harris'), both in combination with ordinary general skill and combination with US Patent No. US5894298 Display apparatus to Hoeksma.

Harris discloses: 

In the case of the earpiece 18 being ported through the keypad 20, the controller 88 disables the plurality of key input signals responsive to one of: the ear cup 78 being positioned proximate to the person's ear 84 or the person's head 86 responsive to a signal from the proximity sensor 92,

Which raises the question - if AmberScope was available at the time of the dispute, could it have been used to find the Harris patent?

The answer is yes, via a simple two step process shown below:

1) Enter US6246862 into AmberScope, and use the Next button to systematically review the patents in this network, working from the highest ranked (automatically computed AmberScore) patent to the lowest, reviewing these patents for documents that are particularly relevant to the claimed invention. As we identify relevant patents, we manually assign a relevancy score of 0 (green) to 4 (red) and then explore the neighborhood of these patents.

In 10th highest ranked position, with an AmberScore of 2.5,we find US5729604  Safety switch for communication device filed by Nortel, which discloses in its abstract:

A communication device such as a portable wireless terminal for a telephone system having a proximity sensor to automatically switch the receiving transducer from receiver mode to loudspeaker mode. The proximity sensor is positioned in the handset such that the associated circuitry switches the transducer from loudspeaker mode to receiver mode in response to the handset being brought into proximity with the user's ear.

The relevance to the Grivas patent is quite obvious, although this does not disclose disabling the keypad via the proximity sensor.

2) Since the Nortel patent is clearly relevant, we make this the focus, and again start reviewing its connected patents in order of AmberScore value using the Next button.

And in 10th position we find US6052464, the Harris patent. Which as a matter of interest has the US patent codes 379/433, in contrast to the 455/566 and 455/95 US patent codes for the Grivas patent (and which further confirms the risks of searching patents using patent codes alone).

This is yet another example of how quick and simple seaching patent networks using powerful search engines such as AmberScope can be a very effective means of finding prior art.  

In November 2012 Ambercite introduced AmberScope, which is a new means of searching patents based on a agglomeration of all of the patent search reports in surrounding a starting patent, which we call the focus patent.

Which raises the obvious question - what focus patent should you use? Many experienced searchers are used to conventional patent searching, which begins with a keyword or patent code search. AmberScope does not have this capability, for the reasons that:

• AmberScope is set up to do one thing very well - citation searching. Adding keyword or patent code searching may compromise this functionality or slow it down;
• There are many other good search engines that can do keyword and patent code searching well.

But given the absence of this capability, where can searchers get their focus patents from?

There are a number of potential sources:

• A patent you are trying to invalidate, or its US/WO/EP equivalent;
• A conventional patent search. Simply run a conventional patent search in your favourite search engine (I often use Google Patent or PatentLens, but there are many other search good engines out there), find a few patents that look interesting, and use these as starting patents. A trick to remember when running such conventional searches is that they do have not have to be perfect - even if you can't come up with the perfect search, AmberScope may very well lead towards the most relevant patents in any case. ;
• A relevant patent you find during an AmberScope search. If it looks interesting, refocus the network on this patent;
• Examiner's search reports for a similar patent, or the patent you are trying to invalidate, or a search report for an equivalent patent in another jurisdiction. More and more patent offices are publishing search reports, and these should contain details of the closest prior art - these patents can be excellent starting points for AmberScope searches;
• Court documents, such as those listing prior art for a patent you are looking at.

As an example of following up on a conventional patent search, we could run a search for, for example, blond hair dye. If we enter the term "blonde hair dye" into Google patent, and restrict the results to US patents, the first listed patent was US5316481 System for displaying and selecting hair dye shades.

If we enter this patent into AmberScope, this brings up a range of similar patents, as shown below, for example US3702508.

And if these weren't the patents you were looking for? We could always try the next patent on this list, or review the list for the closest patents, or try different key words, or try a different search engine.

This process is also shown in the flow chart below.

Ambercite has published a range of case studies discussing how relying on patent codes and keywords can lead to relevant patents being missed by even diligent searchers. 

But why is this? 

One reason might be that different searchers have different perspectives when searching for patents - and these perspectives may differ from those of examiners who assign these classifications. To explain this further, I will revisit  a couple of patents earlier discussed, namely patents for a phone watch, and a cardboard box. Both patents are relatively simple inventions yet still contain traps for those searching for them. We will also revisit an early patent landscaping study on Alzheimer's patents.

1) First Case study - Did Swatch invent the SIM card watch?

As previously discussed, In 1999 Swiss watchmaker Swatch filed for US patent 6224254 Radio telephone timepiece including a SIM card

 For a:

....radio telephone watch intended to be used in a mobile communication system, this watch including in particular a case and a wristband allowing said watch to be worn on the wrist, 15 characterised in that the watch includes in particular: a casing, associated with a first strand of said wristband, capable of receiving, in a removable manner, a SIM card...

 As a mental exercise, I invite readers to consider how they would characterise this invention. Is this is a:

• watch?
• SIM card reader?
• Phone?
• Wrist phone?
• Mobile communication device?
• All of the above?
• Another classification I have missed? I am sure that there are many such classifications.

But what did the USPTO characterise this watch as? According to their webpage for this patent, the USPTO assigned the following US patent codes to this patent:

The USPTO also listed on the same website IPC (International Patent Classification)  as well as the new CPC (Cooperative Patent Classification) codes.  CPC codes are intended to replace both the USPTO and IPC codes, and many cases appear to be similar to IPC codes. To avoid repetition I will list the newer CPC codes for this patent, but not the older IPC codes. 

These patent codes all appear to be correct.  Equally they are not 100% helpful, as they collectively cover a large range of patents. They also individually miss the key aspect of the Swatch invention, although if combined do a reasonable job of representing the Swatch invention. 

But is this a once off finding? In my earlier published blog, we conduct a patent search starting with the Swatch patent, and end up with a Motorola (now Google) owned patent US5889737 for a Wrist carried electronic device.

Which disclosed the concept of a watch based mobile electronic device, including the potential for a phone, powered by a battery in the wrist band:

The present invention relates generally to portable electronic devices, and more particularly to a portable electronic device carried on a user's wrist by a wrist band and powered by an electronic storage device in the wrist band...

The device 10 includes an electronic unit 12 intended to be worn, for example, on a user's wrist.... The electronics necessary for making a watch, or for that matter, a portable cellular phone, two-way radio or selective radio receiver, such as a pager, are well known in the art, and may be incorporated into the electronic unit 12.

 According to the USPTO website, this patent has the following US patent classification codes:

And these CPC patent codes:

Again when combined, the CPC patent codes appear to describe the Motorola invention reasonably well. But individually they do not. 

In fact these codes, just like the US patent codes, describe different aspects or perspectives of each invention. But how can a searcher conducting a search for a similar invention hope to identify all of the relevant patent codes, out of the 260,000 available CPC patent codes? And then take the risk of combining them? 

More to the point, if different searchers are conducting apparently similar searches for watch phones, they may have different perspectives. For example, the first searcher might be looking for mounting arrangements for the electronics in phone watches. A second searcher might be looking for evidence that watch phone watches were anticipated in the patent literature. A third searcher might be looking for functional layouts in relation to design patents for watch phones. Framing each search in the light of these different objectives could lead to different perspectives and assumption about which aspects to search for - and therefore the selection of different patent codes to search through as part of their search strategies.

These patent codes in turn may be different to those of prior art patents waiting to be discovered in the patent search because the examiners  had other perspectives when they applied these patent codes.

None of these perspectives are 'wrong' per se - but still can potentially lead even diligent searcher astray.

As previously noted, none of these patent codes clearly captures the core objective of the invention, which is to be a 'radio telephone watch'. To some extent this is inevitable, as many patents are designed to disclose new concepts - concepts that were probably not envisaged by the developers  of the patent code systems. Accordingly any patent codes systems will always be falling behind compared to the inguinity of inventors who are always coming up with new invention.

As an alternative approach, I have entered the patent number of the Motorola patent into our new patent search engine AmberScope, and identified all of the connected patents. I have tried to identify some common themes in these patents, and colour coded these patents using the user relevancy function in AmberScope. 

In this network:

• Blue patents refer to how the main parts of the watch phone electrically connect to the watch band, which may contain a battery or antenna. The Motorola patent is a prime example of this type of watch, as is  US4754285 for an Expansion band antenna for a wristwatch application, to Timex . (18 such patents in the network, many of them covering batteries in the wrist band).
• Purple patents refer to general arrangements for radio or phone watches, mostly to do with the structure and layout of the different components. An example of this is  US4847818  for a Wristwatch radiotelephone. (14 patents). 
• Orange patents refer to other aspects of normal watches, for example US4972394 for a Multipurpose external watch face illuminator. (4 patents).
• Red patents refer to hearing aids, for example US5721783 Hearing aid with wireless remote processor (2 patents)
• Green patents are not strongly relevant to watch phones, for example   US7062528 Method and system for identifying a time specific event, filed by Sony (9 patents)

When we consider the subject matter of the Motorola patent, this distribution of patents becomes believable. And this network provides a intuitive overview of the key aspects of the invention.

The other thing to note about this AmberScope network is that the patents displayed will probably have a range of different patent codes that differ from those you started with - so if you still wish to search via patent codes, you can apply these new patent codes into your existing search processes.

2) Second case study - The deceptively complex patent for a cardboard box

In another earlier blog, we discussed an even simpler invention, an improved cardboard box, namely US7000824 for a  Carton and carton blank therefor, filed by MeadWestvaco in 2003.

which has the abstract:

A carton and a blank for forming a carton for holding a plurality of articles, for example bottles, comprising a collapsible tubular corner post formed from an extension of a carton side wall. The corner post is adapted to move from a flat collapsed condition when extending outwardly of the carton to be automatically erected by folding the corner post inwardly.

In other words, while the invention on first glance is an easy open carton, the patent is in fact is about about the corner reinforcing for the carton  - and this is confirmed borne out by claim one, and some of the images shown in this patent. In fact, only claim 9 of the three independent claims in the granted patent refers to this easy open feature, and only in conjunction with the corner post feature. The role of these corner posts becomes clearer in the image below.

This is a good example of an even apparently simple invention with two distinct aspects.

The USPTO lists the following US patent codes for this invention, in the following order:

Of note, the first listed USPTO code refers to the easy open feature, although some of the above codes refer to the corner feature.

In comparison, the listed CPC codes are:

But how do these patent codes compare to those of the closest prior art? In the last non-final rejection for this patent, dated 17 December 2004, the examiner suggested that the then version of the patent application lacked novelty (s102) in the light of the following patents. I have added the listed CPC codes for these patents, for comparison.

Note the lack of cross-over for the patent codes for the different inventions - including in comparison to the Meadwestvaco patent. All of these CPC codes appear to be right in themselves - but all focus on different aspects of the invention. In this aspect, the increased granularity of the new CPC patent codes may actually count against their usefulness as it could very easy to overly restrict a patent search by not all selecting all of the potential CPC codes for a given invention. 

But what does an AmberScope search show?

In the image below, we show all patents directly connected to the  MeadWestvaco  patent, along the ghost patents (indireclty connected patents that AmberScope suggests might be relevant, and which are faded out slightly, hence the term 'ghost patents)). In addition, I have gone through and colour coded all of these patents depending on the aspects of the  MeadWestvaco  invention the patents are closest to

• The yellow patent is the MeadWestvaco patent.
• Blue patents disclose cartons that show an easy open feature, for example US4417661 (22 patents shown in network).
• Purple patents disclose cartons that disclose a reinforced corner, for example  US4770339 (19 patents).
• Green patents disclose cartons adapted for dispensing beverage cans, for example US4396143 . At one level, the  MeadWestvaco  patent can be regarded as a dispensing patent (4 patents).
• The two red patents disclose cartons that disclose both reinforced corners and easy open features, just like the Meadwestvaco patent. These patents are FR1501894  and US7784676.
• Orange patents are not relevant to the MeadWestvaco patent.

In other words, a review of the AmberScope network was able to identify from the available citation data that the MeadWestvaco patent had two main aspects, being reinforced corners and easy open features. In this case, AmberScope was able to visualize how patents citationally connected to this patent generally fell into these two different perpectives.

Noted too that MeadWestvaco patent is comparatively recent. This grouping of patents by perspective can in fact be more useful for older patents that have built up a good forward citation history, such as the Motorola patent reviewed above. In this situation, each examiner for the later patent has provided another opinion on the best perspectives for the patent.

The risk of false security

This example suggests another risk of relying on patent codes, namely the risk of false security. A person relying on any specific patent code to find specific subject matter might assume that the relevant prior patents do not exist simply because they are not listed in a nominated patent class. Yet as seen above, it is very possible that relevant patents are found in other patent classes for a variety of reasons.

In contrast, AmberScope encourages you to go beyond any preconceptions on where relevant patents might be found using the More button, which reminds you there are other potential patents out there that could be worth exploring.

In this particular example, taken from the watch phone case study, selecting this 'more' button would bring up 135 new patents not already shown in the displayed patent network - irrespective of patent class.

3) Third case study - Alzheimer's patent codes lost in a crowded patent landscape

In 2012 Griffith Hack and Ambercite published a patent landscaping study of Alzheimer's treatments. This involved a three stage process as shown below:

While we used IPC codes as part of this process, we did not rely on them completely. But having used such a rigorous process to identify the leading 2,153 Alzheimer's patents, what IPC classes did they fall into? We did not publish an IPC patent code distribution with this study, as we already aware of the limitations of using patent codes in patent analysis. But of interest, this distribution will be shown below (only IPC codes are available due to the age of this study).

In fact, even if we just look at the first IPC mark listed with each of these leading 2153 patents, there were 626 unique IPC marks. The table below shows the five most popular first IPC marks for these 2153 patents, along with the ranking of what we thought was the most specific IPC code for Alzheimer's patents.

Again, there is a fair spread of patent codes. None of these codes appear to be 'wrong'  - for example, some form of peptide might very well be an important component of a successful Alzheimer's treatment. But these patent codes appear to be assigned from a range of perspectives. This makes searching for patents within a specific patent code quite risky, as you might not fully understand the perspective of the person who assigned these patent codes to the patents you are searching through.

4) AmberScope - how to avoid being lead astray by patent codes

Our innovative new search engine AmberScope does not use patent codes at all in its operation, and so can avoid the risks discussed above. 

Instead AmberScope works by the different perspectives of the different examiners working in an area, expressed via their search reports, to form a type of 'meta-search'. Users of AmberScope benefits from adding these 'second opinions' to their own search reports.

And they are second opinions, because we encourage AmberScope users to continue to use their existing search processes (including patent codes where appropriate, as they can be useful providing that you understand their limitations) to find potentially relevant patents - and then to extend these search processes by searching the neighborhood of these patents, as shown below. Extending your searches within AmberScope does not take long - as little as a few minutes in some searches.

By doing so, the risk of being lead astray by patent codes being applied or searched from different perspectives can be greatly reduced.

PS - why can't AmberScope also filter by patent codes?

We have been asked this question a few times by users. In short, a combination of filtering by AmberScope and filter codes will not work. Why? Applying a patent code filter to AmberScope results will filter out too many relevant patents. If you really want to use patent codes, and are prepared to accept all of the limitations discussed in this blog, you are better off using a conventional patent search engine - there are plenty of good search engines out there.

However, as suggested by the image immediately above, another approach could be to apply patent code (and keyword) filtering first using a conventional search engine - and then review the most promising patents in AmberScope. 

Searching for patents can be hard and risky. Patent applicant often use a variety of technical terms to describe a common concept, and patent examiners can use inconsistent patent codes for inventions in a given area. It is not surprising that many relevant patents are missed.

But what if instead you could draw upon the expertise and knowledge of other patents searchers in the same area? They might have used different keywords and patent codes, and found different patents. They might have found different patents to what you have found - and these different patents may be what you are looking for. This would be like getting a second opinion - and at little cost to yourself.

This of course is the underlying promise of citation searching, which is the basis of AmberScope, our new patent searching tool. To demonstrate this, we might try with a patent filed by Swiss watch company Swatch in 1999 for a Radio telephone timepiece including a SIM card., being US patent 6224254. This has the first claim of: 

A radio telephone watch intended to be used in a mobile communication system, said watch including a case and a wristband allowing said watch to be worn on the wrist,

wherein the watch further includes:

a casing associated with a first strand of said wristband and capable of receiving, in a removable manner, a SIM card (Subscriber Identity Module) allowing access to said mobile communication system;

an electronic module arranged in said watch case and allowing access to data stored in said SIM card; and

electric connection means between said SIM card and said electronic module, integrated in said first strand of the wristband.

Given the current interest in Google watches and iWatch, this could be a very valuable patent. But putting aside this potential for now, what could AmberScope tell us about this patent? In the image below, we show the results of a search for US6224254 within AmberScope.

This image below shows the patents connected as forward and backward citations to US6242454, as well as a few of the potentially most important indirect citations (ghost patents, shown in a faded view). There are only 22 patents shown - it does not take that long to review them individually.

Among the ghost patents found is US4847818 for a 'wrist watch telephone', filed by Timex in 1988. 

This was apparently missed by the examiner for the Swatch patent, but the examiner for US patent 5144599 filed by Junghans Uhren GmbH in 1990 for a Autonomous radio-controlled timepiece  did think that the Timex patent was worth considering. Of interest, this patent does not disclose a wrist phone at all, but instead a means of correcting the time displayed on the watch using a radio signal. This is a quite different invention.

Ordinarily, a patent searcher might say 'what value is this irrelevant patent?', but the value in this patent is that its examiner happened to find a relevant patent, namely the earlier Timex patent.

Since the Timex patent is so relevant, it is worth making this the centre of the network within AmberScope, using the 'more' button, which also shows that this patent has 135 additional forward or backward citations not shown in the map above.

If we start reviewing these patents with the "Next' button (the button on the bottom left of the screen that systematically works its way from the highest AmberScore value in the patent to the lowest), we soon come across US5889737 to Motorola (now owned by Google) filed in 1996.

And which discloses in part: 

The device 10 includes an electronic unit 12 intended to be worn, for example, on a user's wrist...The electronics necessary for making a watch, or for that matter, a portable cellular phone, two-way radio or selective radio receiver, such as a pager, are well known in the art, and may be incorporated into the electronic unit 12.

Or in other words, a watch phone. We could also refocus the network on this Motorola patent, but hopefully you have got the idea by now. As a matter of interest, this search was very fast, about 10 minutes start to finish.

Do this Motorola or Timex patent invalidate the Swatch patent? That is for other people to decide. But this point of this blog is that:

• The examiner for the swatch patent US6224254 did a patent search, and found one set of results - which included the Junghen patent.
• The examiner for the Junghen patent did another patent search, and found a second set of results, which included the Timex patent.
• The examiner for the Motorola patent did a third search, and found a third set of results - which included the Timex patent.

Each set of search results is different - which for the Junghans patent is completely understandable, as it is for a very different invention. But the beauty of using AmberScope is that a patent searcher can quickly and easily benefit from all of these searches, and by doing so, benefit from the collective intelligence of the searchers in the network.

Or in other words:

AmberScope can help patent searchers avoid the risk of missing patents already found by other searchers

And who wants to be the patent searcher that not only misses relevant patents, but misses relevant patents already found by other searchers?

Using AmberScope, by the way, does not mean that you should give up your traditional keyword and patent code searches - these still can be valuable. Instead, AmberScope can be used to further explore the 'neighbourhood' of the most promising patents you find using conventional methods to provide a second opinion.

Or, in other words: