{"id":74579,"date":"2016-11-10T05:15:38","date_gmt":"2016-11-10T10:15:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/?p=74579"},"modified":"2016-11-09T16:37:25","modified_gmt":"2016-11-09T21:37:25","slug":"free-vs-fee-patent-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/2016\/11\/10\/free-vs-fee-patent-research\/id=74579\/","title":{"rendered":"Free vs. Fee Patent Research"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"HandWhy, you might ask, is the subject of Free or Fee still being discussed almost 20 years after the world\u2019s first \u201cfree\u201d patent databases were launched in the 1990s?\u00a0 One of them, IBM\u2019s Patent Server as it was originally called, helped to revolutionize the world of\u00a0patent\u00a0information<\/a>.\u00a0 Up until then patent databases had largely been the reserve of the traditional online hosts and, with rare exceptions, were confined to abstracting and indexing databases only.\u00a0 IBM\u2019s service, which was later to become the commercial service Delphion, was the first to go beyond bibliographic data and abstracts by offering searchable claims and scanned images of the full text; albeit of US patents only.\u00a0 Many people have argued that this move by IBM prompted several of the larger patent offices into accelerating plans to host their own databases on the web and, indeed, in 1998 the USPTO launched their own freely searchable database of front page information and the European Patent Office unveiled Espacenet.<\/p>\n

Today we take so-called free patent databases for granted.\u00a0 And why not?\u00a0 Almost every national as well as multinational patent office now offers free access to their publications.\u00a0 Some, like Espacenet and WIPO\u2019s PatentScope, also offer access to the publications of other patent authorities.\u00a0 And the market is not confined to the intellectual property offices either.\u00a0 Several commercial organizations, most famously Google, offer users the ability to search tens of millions of patent documents online for free, even providing \u201cAdvanced\u201d search functionality for the more expert user.<\/p>\n

At the time, some commentators suggested that this explosion in free patent information would come at the expense of the commercial vendors and looked forward to a \u201cnew democracy\u201d in patent searching.\u00a0 Others feared that the rise of the free services would lead to a reduction in quality or among choice of vendors.\u00a0 Neither prediction has come true.\u00a0 If anything, there appear to me more \u201cfor profit\u201d patent databases available now than ever before giving users considerable choice of data coverage, search functionality, user interfaces and data export options etc. \u00a0So why and how are commercial databases continuing to thrive given the ubiquity of free patent information and can the two models co-exist?<\/p>\n

Much has been written about the differences between Free and Fee patent databases including added value elements like standardization and normalization (see my previous postings<\/a>), as well as intangible benefits like training and support.\u00a0 Despite these advantages, free patent research tools are not only here to stay but, I would argue, meet a need beyond simply budget.\u00a0 Free tools encourage the commercial sector to \u201cup their game.\u201d\u00a0 As more content and functionality becomes commoditized by the free services, so the private sector must seek better ways to justify their subscription fees and, of course, to differentiate themselves from their commercial as well as free competitors.<\/p>\n

\"webinar-free-vs-fee-research\"<\/a>But does it have to be a case of either or?\u00a0 Many organizations that I have worked with (in a career that spanned more than 30 years; equally divided between the public and private sectors) subscribe to one or more commercial patent research tool.\u00a0 But few organizations can afford or want all of their employees to have access to tools designed primarily for professionals.\u00a0 While some vendors have adapted their tools to provide end user interfaces so that non-expert searchers can benefit from the advantages of a commercial tool, many choose to provide access to the free tools.\u00a0 But which free tools?<\/p>\n

As someone once said, not all patent databases are created equal.\u00a0 In the Elsevier journal, World Patent Information 42 (2015) a comparison of three of the main multinational patent databases available to the public free of charge, Espacenet, Patentscope and Depatisnet, concluded \u00a0that… while Espacenet had the best features for searching, Patentscope was best for analysis and Depatisnet best for complex search tasks.\u00a0 This suggests that in the patent information world the concept of \u201cOne Size Fits All\u201d does not work and just as searchers will use a variety of free tools, so will they mix and match with the commercial tools.\u00a0 Indeed, the EPO itself encourages practitioners to, \u201cUse the right tools.\u201d\u00a0 Adding that, \u201c… free patent search tools are not necessarily more cost-effective than fee-based databases, once you factor in your manpower costs\u201d.\u00a0 And warns of \u201c…. the limitations of free products.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clearly there is room for both commercial and free tools to exist and while the private sector is dependent upon the public sector for the majority of the raw content, the relationship is healthily symbiotic.\u00a0\u00a0Join us on November 15th\u00a0at 11:00 a.m. ET\u00a0<\/a>to hear how, in the opinion of the writer, free and fee-based research tools can and should co-exist and see a live demonstration of the latest patent research solution from\u00a0LexisNexis \u2013 TotalPatent One<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the time, some commentators suggested that this explosion in free patent information would come at the expense of the commercial vendors and looked forward to a \u201cnew democracy\u201d in patent searching. Others feared that the rise of the free services would lead to a reduction in quality or among choice of vendors. Neither prediction has come true. If anything, there appear to me more \u201cfor profit\u201d patent databases available now than ever before giving users considerable choice of data coverage, search functionality, user interfaces and data export options etc. So why and how are commercial databases continuing to thrive given the ubiquity of free patent information and can the two models co-exist?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":109420,"featured_media":74580,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[228,3],"tags":[33,4691,628,34],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74579"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/109420"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74579"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipwatchdog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=74579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}