Jun 4, 2017

Automatically generate synonyms and related terms in patent searches - Formulating a patent keyword search strategy

While I was reviewing PatentInspiration tool from AULIVE, one of its features impressed me so much that I just couldn't wait for the review to complete, and I decided to post about it right away. The feature under discussion here is called 'Find related terms'.

Patent searching is a tricky business; Getting the right keywords, classes, company name variations, etc. are very important in creating the right search strategy.

There are many tools out there that offer some kind of keyword search support feature which either suggests keyword variations, lets you opt for stemming, or suggests synonyms, and PatentInspiration offers all these and more in the 'Find related terms' feature.


Feature to find related terms, synonyms and keyword variations for patent searches in Patentinspiration 


Here's how this works:

Access the 'Find related terms' link within a new report


Enter the keyword for which you need related terms in the dialog box that opens when you click on the 'Find related terms' link:



Choose the keywords that you feel are most relevant to the case you are working on (or even select all)


Add the selected ones to your search query:



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Test - 'Find related terms' output for keyword 'Artificial intelligence' on Patentinspiration


When I ran a test for this feature using the keyword 'artificial intelligence', the tool suggested some very useful keyword variations to me such as machine learning, natural language understanding, speech recognition, text categorization, bayesian networks, neural networks, etc. It even gave me a very relevant keyword for my case - kohonen networks (which frankly I wasn't expecting from the tool).

'Artificial intelligence' synonyms by 'Find related terms' feature