Current Challenges in Patent Information Retrieval, 2nd Edition

This second edition provides a systematic introduction to the work and views of the emerging patent-search research and innovation communities as well as an overview of what has been achieved and, perhaps even more importantly, of what remains to be achieved. It revises many of the contributions of the first edition and adds a significant number of new ones.

The first part “Introduction to Patent Searching” includes two overview chapters on the peculiarities of patent searching and on contemporary search technology respectively, and thus sets the scene for the subsequent parts. The second part on “Evaluating Patent Retrieval” then begins with two chapters dedicated to patent evaluation campaigns, followed by two chapters discussing complementary issues from the perspective of patent searchers and from the perspective of related domains, notably legal search. “High Recall Search” includes four completely new chapters dealing with the issue of finding only the relevant documents in a reasonable time span. The last (and with six papers the largest) part on “Special Topics in Patent Information Retrieval” covers a large spectrum of research in the patent field, from classification and image processing to translation. Lastly, the book is completed by an outlook on open issues and future research.

Several of the chapters have been jointly written by intellectual property and information retrieval experts. However, members of both communities with a background different to that of the primary author have reviewed the chapters, making the book accessible to both the patent search community and to the information retrieval research community. It also not only offers the latest findings for academic researchers, but is also a valuable resource for IP professionals wanting to learn about current IR approaches in the patent domain.

Table of Contents

Part I Introduction to Patent Searching
Chapter 1 Introduction To Patent Searching
Chapter 2 An Introduction To Contemporary Search Technology

Part II Evaluating Patent Retrieval
Chapter 3 Patent-Related Tasks At Ntcir
Chapter 4 Evaluating Information Retrieval Systems On European Patent Data: The Clef-Ip Campaign
Chapter 5 Evaluating Real Patent Retrieval Effectiveness
Chapter 6 Measuring Effectiveness In The Trec Legal Track

Part III High Recall Search
Chapter 7 Retrieval Models Versus Retrievability
Chapter 8 Federated Patent Search
Chapter 9 The Portability Of Three Types Of Text Mining Techniques Into The Patent Text Genre
Chapter 10 Visual Analysis Of Patent Data Through Globalmaps And Overlays

Part IV Special Topics in Patent Retrieval
Chapter 11 Patent Classification On Subgroup Level Using Balanced Winnow
Chapter 12 Document Image Classification, With A Specific View On Applications Of Patent Images
Chapter 13 Flowchart Recognition In Patent Information Retrieval
Chapter 14 Modern Approaches To Chemical Image Recognition
Chapter 15 Representation And Searching Of Chemical Structure Information In Patents
Chapter 16 Machine Translation And The Challenge Of Patents
Chapter 17 Future Patent Search