Federated Patent Search

Federated search, also known as distributed information retrieval (DIR), is a technique for searching multiple text collections simultaneously. This chapter presents the basic components of a typical federated search system and the main technical challenges in each component during its operation. We briefly review the methods and techniques of federated search and how these can be applied in the patent domain. We discuss the problems that usually are ignored in DIR research, but they should be practically addressed in real federated patent search systems. We also present PerFedPat, an interactive patent search system based on the federated search approach. PerFedPat provides core services to search, using a federated method, multiple online patent resources, thus providing parallel access to multiple patent sources. PerFedPat hides complexity from the end user who uses a common single query tool for querying all patent datasets at the same time. The second innovative feature of PerFedPat is that it has a pluggable and extensible architecture, and therefore it enables the use of multiple search tools that are integrated in PerFedPat. We present an example of such a tool, the IPC suggestion tool, which uses a federated search technique (specifically source selection) that exploits topically organised patents (using their intellectually assigned classifications codes) to support patent searches by automated IPC suggestion. This tool shows how DIR techniques can be applied beyond the typical scenario of implementing a federated search system.

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