The software for staff in R & D

Engineers and scientists in their research teams need to be informed about the State of the Art in their area of development. Keeping an eye on the competition is necessary to avoid collisions with the IP rights of other patent holders. Regular viewing of current relevant patents prevents double development, patent disputes and inspires new ideas. Colleagues in R&D rarely have time to dedicate themselves regularly to researching patents. Therefore it is necessary that information is relayed in a compact and well processed manner. With the Invention Navigator Portable R&D (INav Portable) a tool has been developed which is specifically tailored to the needs of colleagues in R&D departments. The Invention Navigator Portable is therefore used within a company-specific Knowledge Network. In this network it accesses the filing structure (folder tree) or enables access to the global database search4ip.

How does the Invention Navigator Portable work?

The Invention Navigator Portable is a software you use to access data and databases located at SIP via the Internet. It is used within a company wide Knowledge Network. This software does not require administrator's rights for the installation on your computer and can be downloaded directly from our download page. The program can be started from a link on the desktop or directly from a USB stick. The program will automatically update itself if a new version exists.

Once logged on, the user reaches the start page or a defined title list containing new patents which can be edited by the user. The documents in this list are added either  automatically via a monitoring profile /alert or assigned manually by another user, e.g. Patent professional. This list can now be edited. Synonym highlighting, zoomable images, all the essential information in the screen enable fast patent viewing.

Work flow: check relevance, assign, evaluate

Every company uses its own work flow to comment on patents and inform colleagues about relevant patents. This work flow is displayed in the Invention Navigator Knowledge Network. According to their rights users can evaluate patents, share them with other colleagues and create an archive with relevant patents. The invention navigator portable is optimized to highlight patents quickly as read or not relevant. Comments and company-specific evaluations can be assigned individually. By using drag-and-drop you can make patents available for viewing to other users. In each work step the user can see if and how a patent/ a family has been commented on. It becomes instantly evident which folders (technical segments, project folders, competition monitoring) of the knowledge network these documents were assigned to. Regardless of whether the user has performed a search in the global database search4ip or got the contents from folders/technical segments like monitoring results - it can be instantly seen if this particular patent has been commented on and in which knowledge network folder it was filed.

Assign own abstract - Description of the invention for staff in R&D

Patent jargon is often hard to understand for colleagues in R&D. Therefore it is sensible, and common practice in many companies that patent professionals create a company-specific abstract for the invention. With the Invention Navigator Portable it is easily possible to create an abstract on family level which is available to all users within the Invention Navigator Network and is displayed in addition to the abstract.