A User-Centered Evaluation of a Web Based Patent Classification Tool

This paper presents a user-centered study of a web based system that can automatically suggest classification codes with the aim to assist patent examiners on the task of patent classification. The aim of the study is twofold. Firstly, we aim to obtain a better understanding of the search tactics patent examiners apply when they do classification search. Secondly, we examine the effect of searching at different levels of the classification scheme on classification search performance. For this user study, two conditions were tested. Both systems are web based. However, the two systems differ in their ability to allow patent examiners selecting the level from which the results will be returned. The results show that systems that allow searching at the level of subgroup are more effective for classification search.

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