Page History

February 2021: IFI Snapshots

For over 70 years, IFI CLAIMS has created value-added data which provides an overview of a patent document at a particular moment. Our patent status, expiry dates, standardized names, and claims summaries have been relied upon by professionals for decades to provide the key information necessary to evaluate patents quickly and efficiently. We have now come up with a term which we feel captures the essence of this vital information: the IFI Snapshot. To read more about what IFI Snapshots are and how they can help you, see IFI Snapshots Explained.

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

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April 2024: Solr installations

Following a recent Solr upgrade, we have found that essentially every Solr implementation is unique. Therefore, pre-written installation instructions are likely to be misleading and we have removed them from our documentation. If you need assistance with a Solr installation, please contact your sales representative to discuss a consulting arrangement.

December 2023: DTD v2.7 released, adding attribute for Unitary Patents

We have released v2.7 of the DTD, which includes a new attribute to indicate whether Unitary Patent (UP) protection has been requested for EP-B records. The attribute, ep-up-requested, has been added to the ifi-patent-status element in the IFI Snapshot. It is marked "Yes" when the legal status code U01 has been delivered in the legal event codes. Once the UP is registered, a C0 record is created where annuity payments, appeals, and other post-grant procedures are tracked. This attribute provides an easy way to identify which applicants are seeking protection in all countries participating in the UP. We plan to begin loading the new attribute on March 23, 2024. The new DTD is available here.

August 2023: IP Profiles API released

IFI Corporate Intellectual Property Profiles are now available through an API service. This service provides a high-level summary of the intellectual property assets held by corporate entities, including metrics such as the number of patents and patent families owned, status information, and the number of citations associated with a company’s patents. See IP Profiles for more details about this service.

April 2023: Schema tools 2.0-2 released

This minor update adds additional stream functionality to all tools. As of this release, cdws, litigation, and entities are fully supported in extracting, counting and analyzing.

April 2023: Updated Solr to version 8.11.1 

On April 1, we updated our search API and CDWI search to Solr version 8.11.1.

March 2023: Entities stream released

The Entities stream provides company hierarchies and summary statistics. It is the foundation of our IP Profiles. It is available as a separate data subscription. See the Entities Schema and User-Defined Functions, Working with the Entities Stream and Installing Additional Streams for more information.

February 2023: CLAIMS Direct Client Tools 2.6-5 released

This latest minor release of the client tools adds a diagnostics utility. This new utility will gather important information in a CLAIMS Direct instance to better aid support in diagnosing issues.

October 2022: Support for Rocky Linux 8

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

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September 2022: New

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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

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CLAIMS Direct Client Tools support transition to HTTPS

We are transitioning the Shared Services API and on-site update client communication from the HTTP protocol to HTTPS exclusively. To support this transition, the new release of perl-Alexandria-Client-Tools defaults to HTTPS for both API communications and update package downloads. On-site customers should install the new client tools by November 1, 2022.

May 2022: CLAIMS Direct CDWI 2.9.1 released

The following fixes and enhancements are included:

• A new reporting option csv.datefmt was added to the New Report screen.
• A bug wherein attachments with identical names were suppressed from grid listing output has been fixed.
• Updated Privacy and Terms of Use

May 2022: CLAIMS Direct CDWS 3.9.1 released

The following fixes and enhancements are included:

• A bug that made the endpoint /attachment/update take minutes when no @limit parameter was given has been resolved.
• system/dwh/loading endpoint is now streams aware. This resolved an issue when a @load_id parameter was from a non-xml stream, the endpoint returned HTTP 204.
• In an effort to harmonize date output formats in the Reporting API, a new csv.datefmt option is available. Please see Reporting for more details.

May 2022: CLAIMS Direct Client Tools 2.6-3 released

The latest release of the client tools adds further enhancements to streams processing. In addition, package download integrity is maintained by the addition of an MD5 checksum.

April 2021: CLAIMS Direct Client Tools 2.6-1 released

This latest release introduces streams capability. This new feature allows the seamless integration of custom XML content, non-patent data sources and custom data filtering for on-site customers. Additionally, aidxd has a new argument --tolerate which directs aidxd to tolerate all errors and retry. This brings aidxd in line with the current behavior of apgupd. Due to the change of behavior, this argument is optional but future releases may make this the default behavior. If you wish to use it, simply add it to the CD_OTHER_OPTIONS option in /etc/alexandria/aidxd.conf ( CD_OTHER_OPTIONS='--tolerate'  ) and restart the daemon via systemctl.

March 2021: Attachment service enhancements

On March 20, 2021 we are releasing the following enhancements to the Shared Services /attachment endpoint:

•  @exclude has been added as a parameter to the /attachment/fetchall endpoint. This allows you to exclude specified extensions from the package. See /attachment/fetchall for full details.
• The attachment/abimage endpoint, which allows you to fetch a front page drawing or figure, has been enhanced to handle image manipulation. See /attachment/abimage for more details.

March 2021: Litigation API released

Global litigation data from MaxVal is now available on the CLAIMS Direct platform as an optional data subscription. Case details, outcomes, party data and more are available from multiple courts. The data is provided in a similar XML style to other CLAIMS Direct content, making it easy to integrate with other patent content. See Litigation to read more about how to access this service.

March 2021: Chinese Snapshots

From March through August, approximately 30 million IFI Snapshots will be added to our Chinese full text documents. This will allow Premium Plus subscribers to access IFI’s standardized names, patent status, expiration dates, and claims summaries for Chinese records. To read more about the IFI Snapshots and how they can help you, see IFI Snapshots Explained.

February 2021: IFI Snapshots

For over 70 years, IFI CLAIMS has created value-added data which provides an overview of a patent document at a particular moment. Our patent status, expiry dates, standardized names, and claims summaries have been relied upon by professionals for decades to provide the key information necessary to evaluate patents quickly and efficiently. We have now come up with a term which we feel captures the essence of this vital information: the IFI Snapshot. To read more about what IFI Snapshots are and how they can help you, see IFI Snapshots Explained.

Earlier Release Notes

Release notes prior to 2020 can be seen in the Archived Release Notes section.