Table of Contents

2020 Notes

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

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• 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 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.

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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 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:

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

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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 DOCDB since the EPO has not published them yet. We will update any information delivered by DocDB 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. 

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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

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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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