PatSnap, the world’s leading provider of research and development (R&D) analytics, has today announced the launch of Smart Search, a tool that enhances and accelerates patent searches, making the wealth of insights found within patent data more accessible to those with no experience in Intellectual Property (IP).

Patent searching traditionally involves a labour-intensive process starting with a basic search. Initial results are analysed to find more relevant keywords and IPC/CPC codes, which are then added to the query. An updated search is run to uncover yet more keywords and IPCs, and this process is repeated ad nauseam. Historical or saved queries are often added-on, resulting in long Boolean strings which can easily conceal syntactical errors.

PatSnap’s Smart Search enables users to perform better, faster searches through three interconnected upgrades. Smart Search provides: quick access to Boolean syntax, search history, assignee names, and other building blocks of an effective query; intelligent suggestions for relevant keywords and IPC codes, which go beyond basic keyword matching; automatic flagging of errors made during the Boolean query construction.

The full list of features included in PatSnap’s Smart Search includes:

• Autocomplete suggestions for assignee names, with disambiguation, reducing human or typing errors
• Autocomplete suggestions based on search history, enabling users to borrow from or reload a previous query
• A syntax helper, which suggests relevant Boolean logic connectors
• Syntax error detection which visually flags query mistakes, avoiding broken searches

Ray Chohan, SVP, Corporate Strategy at PatSnap said “even for IP proficient users, running an effective patent search can take days. Confronted with patent search software interfaces, non-IP users are often intimidated into retreat. This is not only bad for users, it’s bad for innovation as a whole. Through the launch of Smart Search, we hope to provide the key to inventors, scientists, entrepreneurs and others to unlock the treasure-trove of technology, market and competitor intelligence that can be discovered within patent data.”

R&D investment was estimated to top US$2 trillion in 2017, and with today’s economic pressures, businesses are being forced more than ever to make intelligent investment decisions. In the past 40 years, R&D productivity has dropped by an estimated 65%, and PatSnap’s over 3,000 global customers understand the need to ‘look before you leap’ and make use of PatSnap’s solutions to accelerate their innovation.

PatSnap, which has offices in Singapore, China, the UK and USA, has brought together the world’s most comprehensive IP dataset. By adding licensing and litigation data, economic data, patent valuation, and image and chemical formula search, PatSnap provides the world’s most innovative organisations with a new, intuitive source of information for use during research.