Key points covered in the webinar(Hybrid Patentability Searches ™ – An Innovative Way to Ensure Quality at Significantly Lower Costs and Turnaround):

1. Impact of a downturn on innovation and patent creation.
2. Why is it essential to continue innovation through the crisis?
3. How patent creation can be continued at an optimized cost model?
4. Business case proving the overall cost of obtaining a patent is reduced.

Hosted by:

1. Vaibhav Henry, EVP at Sagacious IP
2. Sumit Prasad, Group Manager at Sagacious IP
3. Abby Woods, Global Key Accounts Manager, Sagacious IP

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More Details about this Webinar:

We are going through an economic downturn where it is a wise decision to make cost-cuttings on activities that do not give immediate return on investment (ROI). Most organizations think innovation has a long-term ROI and thus stall such activities as soon as a cut is proposed.

We know that intellectual property (IP) is a bi-product of innovation, but somehow this downturn is also underestimating the essentiality of IP. Many organizations are reaping multi-prong benefits from the patents they had created earlier – whether it is about funding their businesses from loan collaterals or patent monetization. We compared this situation to a similar financial crisis that companies faced back in 2008 and were surprised to see that in 2009 the filing went up for almost all the leading companies. That means the inventors never stopped to innovate and in fact this time was used to conceive cutting edge technology and to grab the opportunities that the downturn created.

However, the question still remains – Is a long-term ROI favorable? We intend to bring a webinar series addressing these concerns of organizations.

The first one is Hybrid Patentability Searches^TM, which is a rational approach of increasing ROI while keeping costs in control. Through this webinar we introduce a working model to refine ideas for inventions conceived in an organization, in a cost-optimized manner such that only valuable ideas go for protection and yet no idea goes waste, with reduced overall cost. We will also look at some AI based tools, our hands-on experience with them and how and when to use them.

This approach has already been well received by some of the most IP conscious firms.

In the series, we will also cover other hybrid models such as Disclosure Preparation and Patent Drafting & Prosecution Support.

Webinar Transcript

Abby Woods speaking: Hello, everyone. This is Abby Woods with Sagacious research. I think we’ve got plenty of people here. I think we’ll be starting in the next thirty seconds, or so if we can be patient. I think we’ll allow some more people to join in, and then we’ll start off.

Alright, as I can see plenty of people joining in, and first of all, hello everyone. This is Abby Woods, the Global Keys Account Manager, Sagacious IP, and I am your host for the session. Thank you all for finding time and visiting today’s webinar.

I would like to once again, as I told you, welcome you all to another important webinar. The topic for the webinar is, “Hybrid Patentability Searches”, which is “an innovative way to ensure quality at significantly lower costs and turnaround”. I want to go ahead and introduce this particular topic and the esteemed speakers on our session today. However, before that, I am delighted to welcome all the participants from around the world. I can see attendees from, obviously, the US, Canada, parts of Europe, France as well.  

I hope things are better there in France; I also see people from Germany, UK, and of course, many from India as well. That’s great. That’s a great mix of audience that we have currently.

Once again, your participation is a wonderful encouragement for our efforts and spreading knowledge during these unfortunate times. I hope you all are keeping safe and your families are safe.  We are also thankful to our clients who are always sharing their problems with us. So, we get an opportunity to come up with the relevant solutions as well.

As far as this webinar is concerned and this topic is concerned, our first speaker for this session is Mr. Sumit Prasad. He is a Group Manager, Hi-Tech Searching and Analytics, and he’s an IP which is obviously an intellectual property professional.  He owns more than 70 years of work experience in providing innovation management consulting.  He does this for various large, obviously small companies in a cost effective manner. Welcome to the webinar, Sumit.

Sumit Prasad speaking: Thanks Abby, thank you for having me on this webinar.

Abby Woods speaking: Fantastic, welcome you once again, and supporting Sumit is as usual Mr. Vaibhav Henry. He is the Head of Hi-Tech Team and he’s basically here with Sagacious with more than 10 years of experience. He holds an experience in supporting clients in all spheres of IP research. Welcome, Henry.

Vaibhav Henry speaking: Thanks for having me, Abby. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Abby Woods speaking: Fantastic, before we start off with the presentation today, let me ask Sumit and Henry for their initial remarks. Their initial remarks are needed on the topics that we’re talking about and the topic we talked about. The topic is ‘Hybrid Patentability Searches’. Go ahead.

Sumit Prasad speaking: Well, I’ll take the flow first. Well, this is indeed an important topic Abby. This is the second chapter of the webinar series that we’re doing for IT for IP initiative. Here, we’re going to talk about raising the inch of quality at significantly lower cost and turnaround with the help of hybrid approach.

For the first time, IT for IP is taken as an initiative with Sagacious. Thereby, we are embracing the adoption of IT technologies in patent industry. Over a past couple of years, Sagacious has been interacting and collaborating with a lot of the leading software players. These players are trying to innovate IP in terms of the processes operated. They are also trying their effective solutions to increase efficiency in overall IP industry.

We have also got an opportunity to be part of the journey with a lot of our clients. This helps us to implement and solve some of their problem statements with help of these evolving IT technologies. These include AI, machine learning, workflow automation, RPA – Robotic Process Automation etc. To judge our IP activities is to believe we have a balanced capability to help companies evolve from current phase of IP. This is the new or the next generation of IP and that’s where IT for IP initiative comes into picture.

Coming to this hybrid approach that we have conceived as an extension to our continuous effort and optimized-

Vaibhav Henry speaking: Sumit, this is Henry. Sorry to interrupt, your voice is coming in and out. You have to be loud and you have to be closer to the microphone.

Sumit Prasad speaking: Ok thank you. Is it any better now?

Vaibhav Henry speaking: Yeah, alright, that’s great.

Sumit Prasad speaking: Alright, I’ll just talk about the hybrid approach. So, I was saying that this hybrid approach is that we have conceived is an extension to our continuous effort and optimizing the patent practices. I’m thrilled to talk on this topic today and I look forward to address your thoughts or concerns down the line during the webinar. I am looking forward for a wonderful session ahead.

Abby Woods speaking: Fantastic Sumit, I was just about to intervene as well before Henry actually intervened. Fantastic, do you have a couple of pointers on that as well?

Vaibhav Henry speaking: I think, I would just suggest that as you mentioned, we are thankful to our clients who are sharing their problems with us. This is such that we think about their problems, get in their shoes, and try to find a solution for that.

The most recent problem has been that most of the clients are facing budget cuts. Everyone knows that. Due to the COVID situation, every company is facing budget cuts and because of that we felt like we had to find a solution. This is such that rather than cutting the budget we are able to fit the current pipeline of their inventions. This is such that we are able to fit some solution which has the same amount of output without actually cutting the number of inventions that are eventually going through.

This is a kind of hybrid approach which helps at least kind of 20 to 30% budget/ cost-optimisation. We will talk about that in a bit. Sumit would start explaining, then, we can take it from there.

Abby Woods speaking: Thank you, Vaibhav and thank you, Sumit. Thank you both of you for setting the context for this webinar. Before we move ahead, just a little housekeeping before we get started. If you have any questions, I’m addressing the audience here, during the presentation; you all can share your questions via the GoToWebinar question box on the right side of this presentation window. We will pick up on those questions and ask them to our speakers after they finish their brief talks.

Also, there’s an announcement which we’ll be sharing later as well. However, we would ask everyone to stay till the end for this particular announcement that could benefit you all in these desperate times.

Now, without any further due let’s get started with the main part of our presentation. For that, let me invite Sumit to take us through the first part that helps us understand the topic. The webinar is titled as ‘Hybrid Patentability Searches which is An Innovative Way to Ensure Quality at Significantly Lower Costs and Turnarounds’. Over to you, Sumit.

Sumit Prasad speaking: Yes, thanks, Abby. Let us set up the agenda for today’s discussion, first. We have divided the presentation in four parts. The first one, we will talk about the topic itself and why the need is there. Then we will talk about innovation process overview- a traditional innovation funnel.

Following that, we’ll talk about hybrid approach as to how to adapt in these changing landscapes and how to address that innovation funnel. Towards the end, we’ll talk about what’s next in store for you and we’ll talk about some of the pointers there.

Without further delay, I’ll start with the webinar for today. As it was indicated by Henry, and it was already anticipated by the global economist that we are going to be in the stage of economic slowdown or recession due to this COVID 19 pandemic.

Apart from having a direct impact on the production due to being in-house, it is going to be an indirect impact on the supporting functions which includes IP. It’s very clear that R&D centres and series may face budget cuts. These may be applied on the non-product development activities and the IP practices that they’re going to do.

However, we see that there is a silver lining to it. We have seen that a lot of companies are focusing on preparing themselves for the next phase. This is when the economy will hit rock bottom and bounce back.

There are various aspects to it. In order to meet this global competition, the R&D activities would remain a strategic priority for a lot of companies, even in these turbulent times. As per media surveys conducted worldwide, a large majority of companies have indicated a few things. They’re continuously going to focus on R&D activities even though the market condition doesn’t allow them to do so.

The companies are willing to take risks and they are looking at a longer term opportunity to innovate in their product portfolio. They are also looking to build a sustainable IP around it. Again, the objective here is to gain the competitive advantages in the next phase of the economic cycle.

It is clear that against this backdrop of economic uncertainty, the R&D importance appears to be undiminished in the eyes of senior executives. Thus, we are going to see an influx in the overall innovation funnel.

This is when this importance of R&D is going to be conveyed throughout the hierarchy from top management to the R&D teams. That being said, IP department would agree representing them. It would agree that this is the right time to think about optimized use of resources. This would be both in terms of budget as well as in terms of the effort of the in-house IP team. This would also include the R&D team to meet the targets that we have set for the coming physical years.

History is a teacher and there are a lot of lessons that that can be learned from history. We have compiled a list of some facts from an article published by J. Rosie on the value of IP in recession. From these examples we can see that post-recession there are many breakthrough inventions that has happened. This has really paid off the companies who have invested in these critical times. This is done with proper measure and obviously keeping into account all the other factors.

When we talk about ‘The Great Depression’ of 1929, their Radio Corporation of America launched its R&D effort. This was done for the first commercially available television in 1934, and this was a time when we saw the first stock market collapse. This was followed by losing 97% of the stock value in the next three years.

Similarly, we have seen investment by Toyota and Nissan to boost the innovation in Japan auto- industry. A similar trend was seen when we saw the rise of internet economy in the 1990. Also, not to forget Apple‘s effort to re-invent the music consumption in the age of music piracy and everything going around in the recession age of 2000s. Similar trend was seen in the 2008. Recession and a lot of telecom companies came into the limelight advancing the telecom industry.

Moreover, it helped in boosting the telecom industry on innovation front multifolds. This kind of reinforces our lesson that after the recession or during the recession, we need to be focused about everything. We are at a moment in history when active investment in the innovation in IP will benefit you in the longer run.

Thus, we have all agreed that patent creation is essential and innovation is essential in technological change. It is also essential in terms of arising from this economic recession and move towards economic growth. Although, it may sound very simple that we need to do this, but we actually need to act upon it. This is because in time of these crises the challenges are much more difficult than ever. In this knowledge economy, we are facing a lot of threats in terms of the collapse of technologies, the rise of different technologies. We need to be honour those in terms of how technology is evolving and how we are going to address that situation.

We also talked about that there is going to be an influx of innovation in the innovation pipeline. How we’re going to balance out on the diminishing resources due to budget cuts and the flood of innovation that maybe your way? We need to find effective ways how to determine which idea to pursue further. Which idea would require more work and also identify the ideas that need to be scrapped altogether?

These are very essential questions and with this chain of thoughts I pass on the floor to Mr. Henry. He would talk more about the rush in innovation funnel and talk us through the hybrid approach. We have conceived this approach to address this situation; over to you, Henry.

Vaibhav Henry speaking: Thanks, Sumit. Thanks for appreciating the problem. Alright, I’ll talk about the innovation funnel which is a legacy process of converting ideas into patents. If we go to the next slide, we’ll see how this funnel is shaped. I’ll wait 10 seconds for you to quickly conceive what we are talking about -what we can see as the innovation funnel.

If you see, the input to the innovation funnel is the ideas, and output of the funnel is patent applications. The more ideas you put in – the more patent applications you get out of it. However, along the way, the patents are knocked down or the ideas are knocked down. Very few of them are actually converted to patent applications. So, if you see the example, you start with 6Xideas and reach to 1X ideas that are actually 1X patent applications. They are actually very less effective.

This is the generic concept of an innovation prediction funnel.  For example- consider that a company’s filing 100 patent applications per year. Then, the minimum number of patent application that it starts with is 600. This is something that we have seen with our experience while helping our clients. This is a case where an innovation pipeline is very well set up.

This kind of conversion happens when the innovation pipeline is very well set up. Also, there are still companies, or functions, or country-wise functions of different companies which have conversion as low as 6:1, it’s as low as 20:1. We know of companies who start with 600 applications and eventually file only 30 applications or 20 applications. This is because most of the ideas are knocked down or shut down because of a lack of novelty.

A lot of ideas are knocked down because the inventors are not very well versed with the state-of-the-art. But right now, this represents a company in which the inventors are well aware of new technology areas. Still, some of the patents or bulk of the patent are knocked down. This is so, because they have to put in the right kind of research to identify the patent that can knock down that idea.

The basic idea here is that the innovation funnel is comprised of three phases. The first phase is the ‘Idea Capturing Phase’, where the ideas are captured, which is, 6X for a decently-sized patent. The ‘Idea Screening Phase’ is 2X. It is not only that these ideas are knocked down. A lot of times we have seen that inventor groups are working on similar things and the ideas are combined. That is also, huge jump of thing that happens during these phases. That is the idea screening phase. Eventually, some inside and out happens at the idea screening phase and you get to the actual prediction.

If we move on with this general understanding of the innovation funnel and the different phases in the innovation funnel we can actually align ourselves with that process. We would then propose a solution accordingly such that we are able to better incorporate this understanding into a solution.

Quickly, I would like to tell you such a company that we talked about. It is probably a company which is screening 800-1000 inventions per year. It would be an 8-10 person working company or 8 to 10 people. Some of them would be patent attorneys – would be filing. Also, some of them would be portfolio managers for interacting with inventors or handling the portfolio per say. Others would be actually researchers – would be working with the inventors. They would also work as an interface to the attorneys or being able to give an output.

As we saw in terms of the innovation pipeline, there are patent boards internally. A group of people, for example, a patent attorney presents his ideas to the patent board. Then, they pass on the ideas to X that we decided. Those are actually the ideas that eventually make it to the patent filing case.

This is the general architecture I know about companies. There’s a big client of ours- a huge company consumer electronics company in which, we know, 5000 people are mapped to one attorney. Even that kind of thing happens as well.

We divided these cases. We made three US cases representing three different types of companies. One would be companies with less than 100 patent filings per year or small and medium sized companies. A small company would be some company that is filing, say, 10 patents, 15 patents, or of the order of 20 patents per year. Companies which are bigger than that: medium sized companies filing up to 100 patents.

Then, there are larger mid-sized companies filing up to 500 patents per year. Then, between 100 and 200; and more than 200 and less than 500 would be companies which are larger in size. Then there would be congregation of huge companies which are filing more than a thousand patents a year. Companies like IBM, Samsung– all of these companies which are big, and they’re filing inventions in all of the technical spheres.

We kind of anticipated the price of patentability search. The most important aspect here is a lot of companies. If we appreciate the previous two slides; we know that there is an explosion in terms of the number of ideas submitted. These are always 6X ideas and there are not a lot of people to process those ideas.

Generally, what companies do is, they outsource their work. Now, that we have anticipated the problem and we know where companies outsource, the companies can generally outsource 6X at the top. They can outsource all of the work that they’re getting from the inventors. That is how generally the companies do outsourcing.

Eventually, 80% of the organization incurs this cost at the 6X level or at least at the 2X or 3X level. So, we saw the funnel. We saw that 6X inventions come and then at the next phase 2X inventions come. They incur a cost for those inventions; for the patentability searches of those inventions.

Some of the companies which have a very well-set IP process. They incur only 2X or 3X. Moreover, they outsource only that part or even the 1X part- they do it on their own. Also, they screen the inventions on their own and then outsource only the remaining part of it. However, it’s a big problem that companies have to face even if they are doing it internally.

It’s a lot of ideas that we need to screen and so there has to be a robust process for this. There are other challenges associated with outsourcing which could be things like a long chain of command. There could be an inventor comes up with something and he discusses that with a patent attorney. That idea for sometimes it comes to us as a paragraph. In fact, most of the times it comes to us as a paragraph and this is what the thought is.

Then, there’s a turnaround time in which an outside consulting company gives back the novelty or the patentability search on that. Then the patent attorney takes a look at that. It’s a huge process with a lot of moving parts. If the idea is shot down then it’s a loss of money, it’s a cost lost, and it’s an effort loss. Moreover, of course, there is loss of idea as well, because if an idea is shut down, it’s discouraging to the inventors as well.

So, now that we know that these are certain challenges, what would be the solution that targets each of these challenges? Long delays, inventor having to deal with a lot of people and then the data coming back to them at a later time; moreover, the inventor loses the confidence on their invention, and a lot of effort and cost loss.

We thought of a hybrid approach that we should, rather than outsourcing everything and things getting shot out, we use outsourcing in two stages. Or, we divide the process into two stages even if they do not outsource it. In the very first phase, we augment the first phase with AI. We have been experimenting with a lot of phase. Sumit has talked about the phase that we have been experimenting with, and we will dust some of your myths about AI tools.

The very first of which being that it is an expensive tool:  we’ll talk about that as well. However, the basic idea of this is that the 6X inventions. They’re put into an AI tool, and we are able to knockout those inventions very quickly with a very less turnaround. This is something that even the inventor can do himself or, the patent attorney can do himself. No need to outsource it. It saves not only a lot of cost but, also a lot of turnaround time and it streamlines the process. We will talk about that in a bit.

The very first myth is that AI research is not expensive. Let’s dust that myth. This is what based on our offering, prices the AI-based searches have. I’ll give you a minute here to take a look into this and then we’ll talk about it. I’ll give you ten seconds just to go through this.

Alright, basically, if you see on the left it talks about knockout invalid searches which we decided. The only thing that we need to do is knock it out. At that point, even an inventor can actually use an AI system. Just put in an explanation about the concept that he wants or a paragraph. Based on that, he’ll get a set of research and he can identify how a novelty-rich his idea was.

If it wasn’t, then at that point itself, he can think of things that he can put into his idea that can actually bring out the novelty. It saves a whole lot of turnaround. This is something which has an ease of use and if you can see it is very cost efficient as well; only $200 for this. At the same time we have also introduced manual search variant for this.

Sorry for that.

That’s the basic idea that we are providing a post-ideation novelty search which is a knockout novelty search. Then we are providing a pre-filing search which is a manual thorough search. We are actually dividing the whole process into two different parts. We’re giving a cost effective first part, which is the post-ideation submission fees. After that, the same manual filing-manual search for the pre-filing fees. So, the next slide shows how much cost savings we can get.

If you see, this process saves up to one third of the cost. If your company is less than 100 patent filings per year, you save around $120,000. If it files less than 500 patent filings a year- saves around more than half a million. For greater than one thousand patent filings, it saves more than a million dollars on the complete invention screening process. The outcome of this is not only that you are able to turn around things at a lower charge rate.

If we get to the next slide, we get to all of the advantages that we get through these searches, through this process. However, before we get to the advantages, I’ll quickly talk about the advantages. Some of it would take you to the different myths. Alright, let us get to the advantages.

Sumit, you can talk about the second myth as well. It’s actually about the quality of these searches. This is also very important. People are vary of the quality of searches offered by the solutions but we’ll talk about that. We have tested – Sumit was the one who has been working for IT for IP and he was involved with testing all of these platforms.

We will talk about that in a bit, but the advantages that we get from this process delivers that no idea goes to waste. You can invest in contemporary searches as well. So, initially by contemporary searches we mean through the course or as the invention or the idea comes closer to filing, you can actually have a knockout search, then a manual – a thorough search, and then a patentability plus FTO or patentability plus state-of-the-art. More and more clients have started requesting this particular search style, which we call contemporary patentability searches.

This is something that we’ll cover in another webinar. This will be three weeks down the line, when we talk about contemporary patentability searches. This is because it helps keep your pipeline full. If you get to a concept which is patentable, then you identify the state-of-the-art. You are not only able to enrich the specification of your current application, but also embed a lot of information in the current application. This is such that you are able to take out cost of IPs.

This is something that we offer in our drafting services as well. For example, if we’re talking about an e-commerce website, we can actually explore how AI can be implemented in that product based on the state-of-the-art. If the patented featured or the idea of the patented feature is the idea that we are trying to patent, talks about some sort of AI, we can actually use patentability plus state-of-the-art such that we understand about what are the other areas in which we can embed this specification that can incorporate features of artificial intelligence.

So, that is another service that we have been offering and that’s how you can align yourself with the complete process. You start with knockouts searches, you knock out most of inventions, and you started manual searches. You identify, you are able to draft the independent claims very well. You clearly understand what is the novelty and how you use it is up to you.

A lot of people use it as a backup file- a broader claim based on their understanding of the novelty. Then, they supplement those claims with a dependent act through the office actions. Then, eventually you also get state-of-the-art done to supplement your specifications. No doubt you streamline the first independently and you are able to draft the claims. Eventually, you incorporated a lot into your specification.

Apart from the cost advantage which we saw 33% cost savings, this complete process- it helps you in making your inventions robust and keeping your pipelines for less room. It has a lot of advantages and feeling of turnaround times is a non-tangible but a very effective outcome of this process. I was talking about the second myth which was about. Sumit, you could go back to the slide just to appreciate them, and then you can talk about the applications that you have.

Sumit Prasad speaking: Thanks Henry. Thank you very much.

I think there is some mistake in the order that’s why it came earlier to the other slide. Anyways, since we are already talking about this myth, if you talk about this problem statement, seven years or 10 years before, I would say this is a real myth. I would also not try to believe that this is not true. But now, there is enhancement of various machine learning algorithms and deep learning networks. It is also seen obviously, in the level of natural language processing and natural language generation that is available in other domains.

Such domains include document processing, speech processing, image analysis, and autonomous driving. We have seen that the algorithms have evolved and the level of intelligence that we could get from these algorithms have considerable results in patent data as well.

AI-based searches are not effective: this is clearly a myth now. If we keep it our hindsight, we are the ones who are trying to sit back and see the change happen around us. I’ll quickly talk about the landscape.

Sorry, bear with me.

Okay, this is the landscape, which we also talked in our previous webinar: IT for IP. There, we tried to understand how this space of IT for IP is now getting more attention, specifically, the patent data. People are trying to see and find solutions to how we can search in that knowledge rich patent data. Additionally, people are trying to see how to act on that data without spending considerable amount of time manually. This is because at some point of time, manual analysis would reach its level of maturity and stagnation. This is when we have to adapt to these services/ solutions.

We have tested and, I personally have tested a lot of these API’s as to say, Amplified, Ambercite, Dorothy, Limestone. From all these API’s, I’m now trying to benchmark them. So, we found that Amplified provides one of the search algorithms which actually fit the bill. Why I’m saying that, is we will obviously going to have to invite the Chief Architect from Amplified to speak on this topic.

We have seen that they have actually tested this data with the past examination history and official packaging validity of positions.  Also, when they have trained the system at data, the accuracy is as close to as the range of 80 to 90%. This is a real good indication for the inventor who is just inventing out of blue, without having the knowledge of all the state-of-the-art technologies or problem statements. For them, it is a right fit because they not only get patents to challenge the novelty themselves.

Additionally, they also get all the patents across that problem statement and think of innovative solution to build their idea in a better way. This is so that it does not become easy for a machine to knockout.

In Amplified, for example, you get a list of 25 most relevant patents. It’s kind of a ranking tool based on the paragraph because the beauty of the tool is that you just input a natural language paragraph. You don’t have to hustle about the givers, you do not have to worry about the class codes, you don’t have to have understanding of the IPCs or CPCs. You just put that paragraph and system throws you quickly a set of let us say 20 or 25 or 30 top patents. 

From those patents, the inventors can themselves go through those patents. They try to understand the landscape where they try to, they can update the timelines. This is because some of the patents would be 3 or 4 years back. So, they can update their timelines, and they can, put themselves in the right timeline and then start innovating from there.

This is one of the tools that we have thoroughly checked for a lot of things. So, we have kind of, developed our own proprietary enterprise solution. This would encompass the solution that Henry just explained, called “The Hybrid Model”.

You can go ahead and evaluate these companies on your own. Moreover, you can also try to see how you can fit these solutions in your day-to-day service searching requirements.

However, just to solve this problem more effectively, we went ahead and partnered with Amplified to build an enterprise level solution. This will enable you to come along with your 6X inventions, as Henry was pointing out. You put those inventions in the tool kit and you filter them out. Then, you reach to that 2X or 3X, based on the conversion rate that your industry has.

Different companies have different level of HRD and IP policies. Moreover, engineers are more IP qualified in some companies while in start-ups they are not very well aware of IP. So, depending on that, you get at least 2X or 3X of inventions, which you actually want a manual analysis on.

Those inventions are very, very important fundamental concepts for your business. Those carry high business value and you don’t want to knock it down even if the AI tool has given you similar patents. But, you still want to take it to the next level. From the tool itself, you can request it for a manual search, and it will be done through search solutions. These solutions are provided by Sagacious and from there, itself, you get the final output.

So, you don’t have to worry about implementing two different solutions. You can have this one stop solution where you can give your credentials to inventors or attorneys. They can come on the platform and try their searches, then and there itself.  Once that is done, they can pass it on to the actual manual searching team. This helps in getting the search evaluated on the other databases to manual effort. That will be a very cost effective and efficient way to execute or to streamline the innovation funnel.

The beauty of this tool is that there’s no requirement of any third party person to assist you. This is because it’s very easy to use. We just need to enter your invention as a natural language paragraph, and the system will give you the results in a spread-sheet. Further, you can probably analyse them at your own ease. That’s one solution that we have developed.

We have invited Amplified to talk more about the algorithms and the other advantages that we are going to achieve in patent data. Additionally, they will also talk about what was not applicable earlier and why it is applicable and actually implementable now.

The second solution that we have is through The Patent Search Firm. This is, again, an open TPSF platform and is primarily focused for solo practitioners and individual inventors. This helps them to just see the top patents in this field. Neither they have access to commercial databases nor do they have to worry about all the collaborations they need to perform with them. They just come on the platform and pay per use. It’s as simple as buying something on amazon. You just put your credit card and get this search processed, and you can consult. That’s another tool which is going to be live in the coming weeks.

While moving forward, I just wanted to do a quick recap of IT for IP webinar. In this webinar, we shared a piece of information about the surveys that we were doing for all the IP verticals. It also discloses information about how IP is going to impact IP practices throughout the IP industry. Moreover, 50% of our participants actually believe that paragraph searching will be the first vertical to see positive adaptation of these technologies. So, we are happy that we are working in that and are conscious enough than trying to address that opinion.

We also recorded one statement from one of our clients who had very subtly commented on the effectiveness of these AI searches. He says that “I expect the cost and efficiency savings will be small to start”, which is quite correct at the beginning. It is stated so, because these things are evolving at a constant rate. As people tend to adapt to these things more, the improvement in these technologies would improve.

The influx of players and the costs would go down, and obviously, the savings would go up. He also believes that his saving would grow larger, over time, up to 30 to 40%. This will happen because, as the cost declines the company’s adoption increases, and familiarity with the tools improve efficiency. This is a very relevant statement, at this point in time.  One is able to save up to 33% of the overall budget in screening these inventions as shown in the sample business case.

As already stated, we are going to invite Amplified- the AI search partner in our next webinar. This will provide us a platform to launch this hybrid solution tool. We will show the demo in the next webinar, and we will also talk about some of the other capabilities. Just as a spoiler, you can play around with that data that is coming from the AI if you have capabilities like the IPC CPC glasses. 

You can further add your manual element, your element of expertise if you want to fine tune that result. There are certain capabilities that we have in that tool and we look forward to have you in that webinar. We’ll talk in detail about that tool and show you some demo searches there itself.

Then, under IT for IP initiative, we also have another webinar in line, which is on patent collaboration tools. This is a tool in which we are heavily investing for past couple of months, I would say, year now. Furthermore, we’re trying to improve. Again, it’s the problem statement of how to keep the innovation funnel in an R&D intact. It also comprises of how to not waste the intent of inventor. 

The inventor’s interest must not die out by waiting for these formalities and all the procedural things due to these moving parts in that system. We need to simplify much more, in a better way, so that inventors have ready access to these prior-art documents. The inventors understand that landscape and innovate on top of it when they are actually talking about that idea. That’s the second webinar, which is aligned in under IT for IP initiative.

Since, we are talking about patentability, so the dynamics have changed. It’s not just about cost it’s also about what are the next gen technologies which vendors are using. There are other things which also need to be taken care while you’re choosing a patent search vendor.

There is another webinar planned for July 16^th, where the eminent speakers will be talking about “30 questions that you must ask before choosing a patent search vendor”. Similarly, talking about India as demography for outsourcing the searches, export control law, or export control regulations, they often play important role in making a decision. Although, there are a lot of myths associated with it, we would like to dust those myths with a U.S patent attorney on board. He is going to join us and talk more about why and how you can overcome these export control regulations.

Furthermore, he would also shed light on what is actually there in the regulations and what is just a myth. We’ll have that webinar in upcoming weeks. That’s what we have for you guys to join for IT for IP initiative or in the panel series of patentability searches. These are desperate times, and we need to find effective solutions to address these equations. We cannot just hold our eyes bag a blind and say that, we don’t want to accept that. We need to accept it.

We need to embrace that change, and we need to find solutions which are much more effective. Moreover, we need to find technology enthusiastic solutions to solve these problems that we have in our IP space.

With that, I leave the floor to Abby to make the announcements and invite some questions from the participants.

Abby Woods speaking: Well, thank you Sumit. That was a very extensive comprehensive overview of the hybrid patentability searches, a topic that we were basically discussing today. I think it’s a question and answer time right now, and I will now hand it over to Henry. He has got all the questions. I can see some questions popping up on the screen as well, here. Henry, if you can go ahead and answer some of the questions which people have been posting to us? Thank you.

Vaibhav Henry speaking: Thanks, Abby. Sumit, I see some questions. The very first question is, “what kind of validation have you done for Amplified AI search which you chose for your in house platform”. I think I’ll let you answer that. I think we tested some more than 10 searches with the manual searching that we did. Then, we had compared the results to what Amplified gave us. I think that kind of analysis we did.

Sumit Prasad speaking: It was not only the real-time testing that we did with these guys. We have been in IP business for quite some long time and we have a good repository of our validity searches.

Under NDA, we also tried and tested all these searches that we have done over past and tried to compare the results. These results were identified with our manual approach, and that was one more validation, which we did for weeks and months. We were trying to run those searches in the database and, we already had researched. So, we tried to see the relevancy of results and how close the results are.

That is another concept apart from what you said. We have tried on live projects as well, in parallel. Apart from this, we have also tried to give it to one of our customer, and they are right now validating it. It’s not just us who have been in the process of validating this API. We have also invited a couple of candidate customers to let us know if that serves their purpose.

Also, a couple of our clients have already shown positive response, and they’re yet to compile all the feedbacks. Once that is done, then, probably in the next webinar we’ll also touch upon those validations. We might also display what we actually did, and what was the outcome of those results in percentages. We will talk about it more in the next webinar.

Vaibhav Henry speaking: Great, thanks, Sumit. The next question is from Neha. She asks, “What is the difference between other available search tools compared to the AI-Based search tools?”

Neha, the very important difference is the available search tools such as Crystal Orbit, etc. actually have a good interface. But still, you need to put in your search strings and you need to put in the classifications. Additionally, you have to identify the class reports for your queries.

In AI based search tools, if you have a paragraph of the concept, the input is just that paragraph. The tool identifies the classes on its own and it passes the query. It passes that text and makes the query on its own, and you just enter the paragraph that this is my invention. For example, a school bag having GPS- that is what you enter. It could be these five words, or it could be a paragraph. The tool passes that paragraph, identifies the catch phrases and words, and searches based on that. It identifies the classes, and it gives you the result and the outcome based on that. There’s no manual intervention, apart from the input that you provided.

Sumit Prasad speaking:. Absolutely, and on top of it, Neha, we also need to be aware of the truncation, and the logical combinations that we are doing. Although, it’s not very difficult, but if you see the audience we are trying to target here are not the search experts. We are trying to address the need for the inventors and the direct IP attorneys who want to see the most relevant patents. If they want to, you can train them to do these databases. Secondly, these databases are more semantic and still don’t have that framework of machine learning.

When I say machine learning, they are the systems which are innovating. Every tool has improved their rankings system with some level of intelligence. But still, they are semantic searches which lack that use of machine learning algorithms in the tool itself. This is because the input that we are getting is a very structured query. They have to do a structured search in that database, which is very well indexed.

However, in case of AI based tools, as Henry said, it is just a paragraph that is taken as an input. All of it is given as an input, and everything has to be done by the machine. That’s where the difference lies.

Vaibhav Henry speaking: Sumit, I think that was about it. Those were the only questions that were posted. I’ll give it back to Abby. Abby, I think you can close this webinar, with the announcement.

Abby Woods speaking: Thank you for that Sumit and Henry. Thank you for the question and answer session as well. Again, as usual, this has been a wonderful session by those two experts out there. There have been a lot of deep insights, lots of learning, lot of takeaways from this session. I’m sure our listeners will be able to use several of these pointers. These would enable them to take back to their management for better budgeting provisions.

We’ve not been able to cover all the questions that we got from the audience. However, those which could not be covered right now would be answered in the write-ups if we publish post this webinar.

Once again, thank you to the speakers. This is now the announcement time which we actually promised in the middle of the webinar. Sagacious team is offering a complimentary offer. This is valid on patentability searches of a 20% discount on future projects for people who offshore a demo on hybrid searching. Once again, I repeat 20% discount on future projects for people who are up for a demo on hybrid searching. Please do write to us.

You can drop us an e-mail at [email protected] to avail this wonderful promotion. I want to extend a big thank you to our listeners from different countries. You’ve spent a lot of time here being attentive and being, obviously listening, very keenly about the topic as well. People have actually helped us start on time as well and stayed with us for an extra 15-20 minutes. We highly appreciate your time and thank you very much.

Once again, thank you for your time and stay safe. Take care of your family and their safety as well and have a great day ahead. This is Abby Woods, signing off from Sagacious research. Take care of yourselves! Have a great day!

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