Table of Contents

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2020 Notes

December 2017: Korean full text backfile

We will soon be loading a backfile of KR full text going back to 1983 for applications and to 1979 for granted patents and utility models.

November 2017: Australian data update

As announced in September, we have loaded AU full text and register data. More than 800,000 AU records have descriptions and claims as of today.

We also added ifi-integrated-data to AU records, as well as office-specific-data from the AU national register.

There are a few issues related to incorrect or missing paragraphs in the description text. We are in contact with our provider to solve this problem as quickly as possible.

We will soon begin loading the pharmaceutical names from the AU register data to our new ifi-annotated-data container. A patch will be required, for which you will receive instructions in advance.

September 2017: ifi-container for Japanese records

The load of ifi-integrated-content for JP records has been completed with the exception of ifi-standardized-names, which will be will be added at a later time.

August 2017: DTD revised from v2.2 to v2.3

We have released version 2.3 of the CLAIMS Direct XML DTD. For details, see XML DTD and Schemas.

This DTD includes new elements that will shortly contain data from the Australian (AU) national register and other similar data sources in the future. We plan to begin loading the AU full text and register data at the end of September and to complete it before the end of October.

August 2017: Recalculated ifi-patent-status for US "abandoned" patents

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November 2020: Names API released

The Names API is now available to Premium Plus subscribers. This service allows users to retrieve CLAIMS Direct IFI names and name variations as well as ultimate corporate owners and subsidiaries. More information about how to use this service is available here.

July 2020: Source attribution added

As required by the French Patent and Trademark office (INPI), we have released a patch which adds a source attribution. The patch is available through the following link:

http://alexandria.fairviewresearch.com/software/patches/alexandria-sql-patch-crb-0114-20200620.tar.gz

Installation instructions and further details are included in the README file. On-site installations must apply this patch before August 1, 2020.

June 2020: Support for RHEL/CentOS 8

CLAIMS Direct now supports RHEL/CentOS 8. Instructions for new instances have been incorporated into the PostgreSQL Installation Instructions and the repository information is provided in the Software Requirements on our PostgreSQL page.

June 2020: New PostgreSQL schema and tools package

In an effort to further streamline CLAIMS Direct PostgreSQL schema versioning, we are introducing a schema and tools package into the CLAIMS Direct yum repository. The new package will offer the main CLAIMS Direct database schema as well as the supporting users database to support deployment of on-site web services. The package contains the SQL to create the database(s) supporting PostgreSQL versions 9.2 - 10.x, as well as tools to check installation, populate the tables, perform extracts, and more. See PostgreSQL Schema and Tools for more information about the package, including instructions on how to install it.

April 2020: CDWS/CDWI report expirations

Going forward, reports created using the CDWS endpoint /reports and CDWI reporting interface will expire after 6 months and will be automatically removed. We intend to begin the pruning on June 6, 2020. Please download any reports older than 6 months that you wish to keep.

April 2020: Client Tools 2.5.3 release notes

Changes

This release contains changes pertaining to how the software is deployed on the system. At the end of 2017, we moved to an RPM-based software distribution by introducing the IFI CLAIMS Direct repository. This release further aligns the installation with distribution standards. The following enhancements are included in v.2.5.3:

1. An unprivileged service account is created and controls processes and configuration files.
   The new user alexandria will be created on installation or upgrade whose home directory will be /var/lib/alexandria. 
2. Configuration files are located in the standard system configuration directory.
   All tools included in the Client::Tools package require a valid alexandria.xml file for database and index settings. This file is now located in the standard system configuration directory /etc. In addition, configuration files pertaining to systemd and init.d control are located in the directory /etc/alexandria. 
3. Log files are located in standard system logging directory ( /var/log/alexandria ). 
   By default, this will be /var/log/alexandria/alexandria.log. 
4. Data warehouse updating and Solr indexing daemons are controlled through systemd and init.d. 
   For CentOS 8 and RHEL 7, the service files apgupd.service and aidxd.service will be installed in the systemd service file directory to enable, disable, start and stop the services. For Amazon (amz1), the service files apgupd.init and aidxd.init will be installed in /etc/rc.d/init.d to enable standard chkconfig  and service start, stop, restart and status commands.

Upgrade Paths

• Upgrading Alexandria-Client-Tools from versions earlier than 2.1.1 (non-repository versions):
  Please contact support@ificlaims.com.

• Upgrading Alexandria-Client-Tools from version 2.1.1 and above (repository-controlled versions):

  Code Block
  language text
  yum update perl-Alexandria-Library yum update perl-Alexandria-Client-Tools

  
  

  Note
  Please note there are two new configuration files /etc/alexandria/apgupd.conf  and /etc/alexandria/aidxd.conf which require editing for appropriate user name and password to interact with the CLAIMS Direct primary update server. See Client Tools documentation for details.

  
  

January 2020: On-site citation and family functionality

With the deployment of the cumulative patch alexandria-sql-patch-alpa-3636-20191101, on-site CLAIMS Direct installations gained the ability to utilize family and citation functionality in-house. We are now offering a supplemental patch which will allow bulk loading of the tables needed to support these new functions. The new patch also expands the available functionality to make citation and family data easier to access. The supplemental patch is available through the following link: http://alexandria.fairviewresearch.com/software/patches/alexandria-sql-patch-alpa-3636-x-20191215.tar.gz. For a full discussion of how to use these new functions, see Leveraging On-Site Citation and Family Functionality.

2019 Notes

November 2019: Cumulative data warehouse update for on-site installations

We have prepared a new PostgreSQL configuration to ensure that on-site CLAIMS Direct installations are up-to-date and providing optimal performance and reliability. This is a critical update that needs to be applied to all CLAIMS Direct PostgreSQL servers. Features include:

• on-site lookups for forward and backward patent citations
• on-site lookups for simple and extended families
• support for data source attribution notices in order to comply with new data license requirements from some publishing authorities
• changes to ifi-annotated-content  container
• additional ifi-keywords  / ifi-statistical-information containers
• critical enhancements and fixes supporting improved data loading

The patch is available through the link below:

http://alexandria.fairviewresearch.com/software/patches/alexandria-sql-patch-alpa-3636-20191101.tar.gz

Inside the package, there is a README file (README.alpa-3636-20191101) describing patch application as well as notes as to what has been changed. On-site installations must apply this patch before December 1, 2019 to prevent errors in the update process.

September 2019: DTD v2.5 released, CPCI added, and bulk attachments service released

1) We have released v2.5 of the DTD. This release includes the following changes (see the XML DTD and Schemas for more details):

• added CPCI value to schema attribute on classification-cpc 
• made classification-cpc  unbounded (*) as child of classifications-cpc 

2) The EPO has announced that CPC-International will be rolled out starting with the next DOCDB data delivery. From week 2019/36 onward all CPC classifications will have classification-scheme=“CPCI”. Classification-schemes “CPC” and “CPCNO” will be discontinued from that week onward. More information about this change can be found in Content Notifications.

3) We are releasing a new bulk attachments web service on September 1. This service is an interface to download attachments in bulk format. It is modeled on the existing XML update service which is used by on-site customers to manage updates to their CLAIMS Direct instance. Please see Bulk Attachments for full details.

July 2019: Soviet Union data added

In July we processed full text data from the former Soviet Union. IFI's collection now includes Author Certificates and Patents from 1924 to 1993.

June 2019: Six new full text countries added

Over the past few weeks we have added full text and PDF files for ARIPO, Bulgaria, Eurasia, OAPI and Romania to our Premium+ collection. Subscribers to either Premium or Premium+ also now have access to full text for Slovakia. Details can be seen in our data coverage table.

May 2019: Full text added for Czech Republic/Czechoslovakia

Full text and PDF files for Czech Republic (CZ) and the former Czechoslovakia (CS) are now available for Premium and Premium+ subscribers, respectively.

May 2019: Kind code changes in Norway and the Netherlands

Following EPO recommendations, we have changed the kind codes of some NL and NO records as follows:

May 2019: Change in CS and CZ document numbers

As announced in April, CS and CZ records changed the format of their patent numbers following DOCDB recommendations. Some of the changes included moving the year to the end for CZ publication numbers dating prior to 2000 and suppressing embedded zeroes for CZ publication numbers, applications, and priority numbers dating from 2000 onward. The following table illustrates the changes.

The rekey, as initially described by the EPO, would have resulted in collisions. For example:

• CZ-9102003-A3 (published 19930113) would have been rekeyed as CZ-200391-A3
• CZ-20030091-A3 (published 20030618) would have been rekeyed as CZ-200391-A3

To avoid these collisions, the rekeyed ucids of 104 CS records delivered by the EPO match the application number and don't follow the rules above.

April 2019: Referenced images now available in Spanish front file

Beginning in January 2019, image files in our attachment server will include referenced images in TIFF format for ES patents and utility models.

April 2019: Five new full text countries added

Over the past week we have added full text and PDF files for Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Portugal, and Slovenia to our Premium+ collection. Details can be seen in our data coverage table.

April 2019: East German patents added

We have added description, claims and full document PDFs of DD granted patents published by the former East German patent office between 1980 and 2003. This content is available to Premium and Premium+ subscription levels.

March 2019: Canadian PDF backfile extended

Over the past few weeks we have expanded our collection of Canadian PDFs. Although there are still a few gaps, the addition extends our Canadian PDF coverage back to publication year 2000.

2018 Notes

December 2018: Rekey of some IN apps

In March 2018 we solved most of the issues related to the numbering format of Indian records. Since then, publication numbers of records corresponding to Indian applications published before January 2016 have a publication number format of YYYYOONNNNN in CLAIMS Direct.

We recently discovered that there were still a few records which contained the old office codes. This created some duplicates such as IN-1992BO00073-A/IN-1992MU00073-A.

In order to solve this issue we rekeyed those records with the old office codes, following the Indian patent office rules:

BO --> MU
CA --> KO
MA --> CH

Examples:
IN-1992BO00073-A is now IN-1992MU00073-A
IN-1992CA00749-A is now IN-1992KO00749-A
IN-1998MA01586-A is now N-1998CH01586-A

As a result of this process 7998 IN records have been marked "deleted".

September 2018: Coverage of EP A4 documents

EP kind code A4 documents cover the supplementary search reports as issued by the EPO following PCT applications entering the EP regional phase. Until now these documents were not fully integrated into the normal EPO publication flow of A and B publications.

Now A4 data is available in CLAIMS Direct both in XML format as well as PDF. So far, the entire year 2017 and the first half of 2018 are covered.

The EPO plans to deliver future A4 documents in batches every half year.

August 2018: Release of CLAIMS Direct Web Services version 3.5

CLAIMS Direct Web Services version 3.5 was released Saturday August 25th. The following changes have been implemented in this release:

• RFC: if no first inventive CPC is available, use first inventive from IPCR
  The reporting column cpc-first-inventive will use the first inventive IPCR if no CPC first inventive value is present.
• RFC: create new endpoint that retrieves all associated attachments as a zip archive
  This new endpoint, /attachment/fetchall retrieves all attachments available for a specific ucid and bundles them into a single zip archive. Please see /attachment/fetchall for service details.
• RFC: (BETA) enable attachment manipulation of image type and size
  A new set of parameters is available on the /attachment/fetch endpoint that will convert image types to common web formats, including jpeg and png. Please see /attachment/fetch for the additional parameters.

July 2018: Extending PDF collection

In the last few weeks, we have added full document PDFs to the following countries:

• CA - Documents published from January 2018 now have full document PDFs. In the next few weeks, we will also be loading PDFs for the Canadian backfile.
• KR - We have added PDF files to the pre-2006 records which were loaded in January.
• RU - Full document PDFs are now available for Russian documents published from 2005 up to the current date. We have also loaded PDFs for some pre-2005 records, although this collection is not complete.
• WO - PCT documents now have PDF files.

We will soon expand our coverage even further by processing PDF files for India, focusing first on applications and later adding granted patents.

April 2018: WO records in Asian languages

We have processed a WIPO backfile of records in Asian languages. The total number of records included in this backfile with new or updated Asian language text is 211915 and the load-id is 304475. We are currently processing machine translations to English for these records.

April 2018: Translations for EP and WO records

As we announced in March, we have added English translations to EP and WO records that were filed in languages other than English.

For EP records these are the translated fields that we added:

For WO records:

In the next few days, we plan to load a backfile of descriptions and claims for WO applications published in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, going back to 1978. This data will include both the original language and English translations.

April 2018: Correction of issues in the ifi-integrated-data section

• Unexpected expiration dates in applications

CLAIMS Direct provides calculated anticipated and adjusted expiration dates for granted patents (publication-type=G ). We recently discovered that some applications (publication-type=A) contained expiry dates in the ifi-integrated-content section. To maintain data consistency, we have removed those unexpected expiry dates as of load-id 302070.

• Incorrect status in some Japanese records with kind code U

The IFI calculated status of some JP applications with kind code U was showing as expired when the correct status should have been granted. The origin of the problem was that JP laws changed around 1994 and therefore kind code U has different meanings before and after the changes. Though this was considered in IFI's calculation rules, some JP records were still being calculated incorrectly as publication-type=G when they should have been publication-type=A. This error in the publication type caused the status to be calculated incorrectly. This has now been fixed in all affected records and they have been reloaded as of load-id 302163.

March 2018: Reload of some Australian and Indian records

In the last few days we have solved a couple of issues caused by problems in the raw data:

• Future AU publication dates

When processing data from the Australian national register, we found several records with OPI dates well into the future. According to the patent office, there was an issue with the optical character recognition for these dates. Although some of these dates have already been corrected, it's taking longer than expected for the patent office to fix the problem. To prevent this from happening again, we have changed these future dates to our default entry for dates that we know to be incorrect (00010101).

• IN numbering formats

For most Indian patent authorities, we receive data from the Indian patent office without a publication number, so we use the application number to fill the publication reference element and to build a UCID. In general, the application reference keeps the original application number format from the patent office and the publication reference (as well as UCID) is calculated by IFI rules.

From 2016 the Indian patent office changed the format of their application numbers. The EPO also recently started to deliver Indian applications in DOCDB, but using a different number format. This created some inconsistencies in our data.

To solve this problem, we did a rekey of around 27192 records (load-id 300781).

Now, records corresponding to Indian applications published before January 2016 have a publication number format of YYYYOONNNNN:

YYYY: four-digit year
OO: two-character office code
NNNNN: sequence number zero padded to five digits

While from 2016, patent numbers will use the format YYYYOTNNNNNN:

YYYY: four-digit year
O: one-character office code (1 for Delhi, 2 for Mumbai, 3 for Kolkata, and 4 for Chennai)
T: type of application *
NNNNNN: sequence number

* type of application:
1 = Ordinary Application
2 = Ordinary-Divisional Application
3 = Ordinary-Patent of Addition Application
4 = Convention Application
5 = Convention-Divisional Application
6 = Convention-Patent of Addition Application
7 = PCT National Phase Application
8 = PCT National Phase-Divisional Application
9 = PCT National Phase Patent of Addition Application

March 2018: Updates to Brazil, Taiwan, EP, and WIPO

In the first week of March, we completed an update of Brazilian records which resolves a major delay in BR front file deliveries. This included around 10,000 Brazilian full text records, which contain both the original language as well as translations. These records include full document PDFs, but are still missing bibliographic data from DOCDB since the EPO has not published them yet. We will update any information delivered by DOCDB as soon as it is available. BR full text is now up-to-date as of 20180206. Going forward, we expect to maintain front file publications within two weeks of publication. 

Similarly, we are loading missing TW full text records published in the last quarter of 2017 and forward.

In parallel, we will be adding English translations to EP and WO records that were filed in languages other than English. We plan to start with EP documents filed in French or German.

January 2018: Korean backfile and Australian pharmaceutical data loaded

We have finished the Korean backfile load announced in December, which added full text to more than 2.2 million KR documents published between 1979 and 2005. English translations will be processed soon.

Pharmaceutical names from the AU register data are now available in the new ifi-annotated-data container. See ifi-annotated-data for more information.

January 2018: Translations for Spanish patents

We are starting a reload of the ES collection to integrate machine translations. This will add English descriptions and claims to more than 370,000 records that currently contain Spanish text only. We will also be completing English translations for titles and abstracts.

Below are translation totals per field after this reload:

invention-title = 1513825
abstract = 818939
description = 370798
claims = 371645

We plan to finish this reload before January 21st.

2017 Notes

December 2017: Korean full text backfile

We will soon be loading a backfile of KR full text going back to 1983 for applications and to 1979 for granted patents and utility models.

November 2017: Australian data update

As announced in September, we have loaded AU full text and register data. More than 800,000 AU records have descriptions and claims as of today.

We also added ifi-integrated-data to AU records, as well as office-specific-data from the AU national register.

There are a few issues related to incorrect or missing paragraphs in the description text. We are in contact with our provider to solve this problem as quickly as possible.

We will soon begin loading the pharmaceutical names from the AU register data to our new ifi-annotated-data container. A patch will be required, for which you will receive instructions in advance.

September 2017: ifi-container for Japanese records

The load of ifi-integrated-content for JP records has been completed with the exception of ifi-standardized-names, which will be will be added at a later time.

August 2017: DTD revised from v2.2 to v2.3

We have released version 2.3 of the CLAIMS Direct XML DTD. For details, see XML DTD and Schemas.

This DTD includes new elements that will shortly contain data from the Australian (AU) national register and other similar data sources in the future. We plan to begin loading the AU full text and register data at the end of September and to complete it before the end of October.

August 2017: Recalculated ifi-patent-status for US "abandoned" patents

Based on recommendations from the USPTO, we recently processed patent status data from a new service called Patent Examination Data System (PEDS) and used it to recalculate the ifi-patent-status for abandoned patents. According to the USPTO, the PEDS beta version replaces the PAIR Bulk Data beta product and corrects one of the major problems with the PAIR Bulk Data beta system related to abandoned patents.

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• Due to customer requests for a simple live/dead status, we are now offering an In-force/Not-in-force status for Designated States. This will result in a more reliable and easy-to-understand calculation of status, and will make this field more usable for things like queries and reports. The new rules are described in more detail here. Our prior calculation rules can be seen here.
• As a result of this reload and the previous reload of bad badly formatted claims, we will add the Claims Summary information to EP records.
• We plan to start reloading EP granted patents on May 22, 2017. This will take a few weeks to complete.

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Euro-PCT records, which have the same issues as the "parent" PCT records, are going to be reloaded to fix the claims issue.
We plan to complete this reload before the end of February 2017.

Citations: DOCDB used to consolidate all citations at the earliest publication, A1 or A2 kind codes. This changed at some point last year and now citations are no longer consolidated. As a result of this change we are going to reload citations for about 14.5 million records in the upcoming weeks. This reload will fix a related issue, a former limit of 99 in the number of citations. This limit doesn't exist any more and after the reload, approximately 173,000 records will have more than 99 patent or non-patent citations.
We plan to complete this reload before the end of March 2017.

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New CLAIMS Global content coverage page

See Claims CLAIMS Global Data Coverage (released: Oct 19, 2015)

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• The web service authentication method has changed from httpauth to using the http headers to pass x-user and x-password to the service
• With 2.0, JSON response are now wrapped in a response container so in CD1.5 CD1.5 {responseHeader:...} in CD2.0 is  {status: success, time:1 ...content:{responseHeader:....} in CD2.0 is  {status: success, time:1 ...content:{responseHeader:....}}New reporting service allows authorized users to produce CSV formatted data sets from lists of patent numbers or search results}
• New reporting service allows authorized users to produce CSV formatted data sets from lists of patent numbers or search results

2014 Notes

IFI Snapshots

IFI CLAIMS has recently added patent status, standardized names, and claims summaries for selected countries. This value-added data provides an overall Snapshot of the highlights of a given patent document and can be found in the ifi-integrated-content XML container. For more information about IFI Snapshots, including coverage, please see ifi-integrated-content. A patch is required to access the IFI Snapshots.