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Octimine is a patent search system that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to conduct sophisticated patent searches. Dennemeyer explains how it works.

Inventions come to life the same way today as they did a century ago. A product of the creative mind, they can change shape multiple times before receiving a patent stamp of approval. The same goes for virtually every product of IP including trademarks, designs and copyrights. What changed in the past 100 years is how we manage and protect these assets.

First comes the idea, next comes the invention, then comes the nagging ‘what if I cannot patent this?’ question. The truth is that ideas, no matter how great, are just the first step toward generating a patent. That is why innovators should always include a patent search in the process, long before getting their invention drafted and filed, because discovering that someone else has already registered your invention is both embarrassing and expensive.

Enter Octimine, a solution that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to conduct sophisticated patent searches. The software’s algorithms are tailored to understand patent language, allowing users to input natural language text in any format and refine the scope of the search by using specific filters.

Octimine’s interface requires almost no training and enables anyone to understand the results, including users with no patent search knowledge. For every kind of full-text search, e.g., an invention disclosure, an abstract, an idea or a scientific article, the software uncovers the most similar patent documents. Acquired by the Dennemeyer Group in October 2018, Octimine’s solutions are the perfect addition to Boolean searches.

Professional patent searches

Inventors, IP professionals, R&D engineers and scientists need to search patent data before, during and after patent filing to ensure optimal IP management. The two main reasons are to find prior art and establish freedom to operate. Searching involves discovering if the invention is new by scanning and evaluating all text in documents and non-patent literature, as well as identifying potential claim infringements from other patents.

"Acquired by the Dennemeyer Group in October 2018, Octimine’s solutions are the perfect addition to Boolean searches."

For a swift overview of prior art, R&D technologists or patent searchers can copy and paste a technology description into Octimine’s search field and receive visualised results in the form of interactive graphs. Professional researchers can perform searches by looking up additional documents and checking whether they missed classes in their initial Boolean search.

There are several other common reasons for performing searches in a patent database. 

Opposition/invalidity search

When objecting to a competitor’s patent, the first option is to file an opposition (at the European Patent Office), or a post-grant review (at the USPTO) and try to prove that there was not enough prior art before the filing date. In this case, Octimine can search for the patent number and identify one or two documents that will convince a patent examiner that there was not enough prior art cited.

Licence partner

For businesses that want to license their technology to a third party, Octimine can quickly look-up companies that have similar patents and clarify whether they infringe the user’s patent. The software can also identify parties that may be interested in gaining access to a business’ technology.

Landscape searching

The term ‘landscape searching’ indicates an analysis of the patent activity of a particular technology. This provides an overview of the state of the art and offers important insights to commercial and technology managers. A feature of Octimine landscape assessment is the generation of graphical analytics to aid decision-making.

Information search for the R&D process

The patent system helps R&D staff access inventions and develop new ideas in the process. Octimine offers this information much faster and more efficiently when compared to the Boolean approach of a standard patent search software.

Besides the software-as-a-service, Octimine offers its proprietary semantic search technology, machine learning services and analytic indicators via the application’s interface. This allows other platforms and software companies to integrate its search technology and analytic indicators in their software applications.

Octimine offers an intelligent and trustworthy platform to innovators, patent law firms and companies of all sizes who are looking to secure their future IP assets.

Dennemeyer provides global protection and management of IP rights. Its services include administrative IP services and software, IP law firm services (Dennemeyer & Associates), IP consulting (Dennemeyer Consulting) as well as semantic patent search software and AI based analytics (Dennemeyer Octimine)