تضمین کیفیت در منابع اطلاعات ثبت اختراعات EPO

In increasingly competitive global markets, access to consistent and dependable information on innovation is becoming more and more indispensable. This article describes the efforts performed at the EPO to create and maintain reliable master databases of prior-art information. Data standardisation and patent family rules applied at the EPO are described in detail and how master databases support the workflow of examiners. The authors discuss the benefits that the EPO, its partners and the community at large obtain from these activities. Finally, a look at what lies ahead reveals exciting potential developments for the near and mid-term future.

The globalisation of economic markets have lead to a globalisation of innovation. Industry, patent offices and patent information professionals struggle to keep both the volume and consistency of global patent data under control. Being able to trace inventions throughout regional markets in a reliable manner has become an essential part of economic competition and an important element for patent offices to master their workload. The key to solving this dilemma lies in reliable and consistent patent information. Quality in patent information is a much-debated topic [2], [3], [4], [5] and [6]. Many definitions of quality have been put forward and, while they are all valid, the question remains: what does quality mean to you? Are there tangible benefits to be claimed from investing in quality in patent data? This article will put the case for a strongly affirmative answer to that last question.1 In a nutshell, data quality translates at the EPO into a data mining and refinement process which helps us to obtain sufficiently clear patent data and puts us in a position to carry out classification and search tasks in a time-efficient and resource-friendly manner. We will describe the efforts that the EPO is making to first turn patent data into information and then transform it into knowledge. We will estimate the quantifiable benefits and explain how the pursuit of quality has changed the EPO’s view of documentation with respect to master databases and business rules. Section 2 of the article summarises the work that has been and is being done at the EPO to create and maintain master databases for prior-art information. Section 3 describes the standardisation rules that are applied to data and how patent families and citations can become powerful sources of information for examiners. Section 4 outlines how master data is used not only to create searchable databases but also to support examiners’ day-to-day workflow. Section 5 details the benefits of master data, while Section 6 takes a look at what lies ahead.