Minesoft & RWS Announce New Cross-Lingual Search Tools in PatBase, In Co-operation With WIPO

Online, June 16, 2012 (Newswire.com) - Minesoft and RWS announce a new co-operation with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) - WIPO's innovative Cross-Lingual Information Retrieval (CLIR) service has been added to PatBase, enhancing patent retrieval in different languages

Powered by WIPO's CLIR system, two complimentary language search tools -Language Explorer and Term Translator - have been developed for use in PatBase, the international, searchable database of published patent documents.

WIPO developed CLIR - their first multi-lingual tool - for their patent service PATENTSCOPE in June 2010. Designed to help users overcome the language barrier when searching patents published in different languages, the eventual aim was to open up a new way of carrying out cross-lingual searches of global patent databases, such as PatBase, to significantly enhance access globally to patent information. Additional languages have been added to CLIR, extending the initial search capabilities from English, German, French, Spanish and Japanese to include Chinese, Dutch, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Swedish.

The predominantly scientific and technical nature of patents and the fact that a patent document is often the first publication to appear about new technological or chemical innovation makes for highly specialised, often completely new, vocabulary being used. Often just entering into use, translators and specialist researchers have a hard task as such words are not easily found in dictionaries.

PatBase offers patent information from over 95 countries worldwide in English as well as other source languages, including non-Latin alphabets such as Chinese and Japanese - so cross-lingual search capabilities will help researchers find more relevant documents. Using the new "Language Explorer", researchers can discover more appropriate keyword translations both from and into a range of languages. "Term Translator" uncovers relevant synonyms in Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages, helping researchers to better utilise the extensive Asian patent literature.

Minesoft Director, Rahman Hyatt, commented: "An internationally positive response to our beta test of the new cross lingual tools (powered by WIPO) highlights the importance of overcoming language barriers when exploring patent information. A priority for us already, the new CLIR Service will co-exist with PatBase's multiple language interfaces, viewing of different languages simultaneously on screen, searchable machine translations and on-demand translations. We look forward to further developing our new co-operation with WIPO in future."
For more information, please contact Katy Wood, Marketing Communications Manager, Minesoft, +44 20 6404 0651, [email protected].

PatBase was developed in co-operation with RWS Group and first released in 2003. Minesoft and RWS Group both won the Queen's Award for International Trade in 2009.

About Minesoft:
Minesoft develops patent, scientific & technology publishing database products and services for intellectual property and research specialists. Building global patent information solutions since 1996, Minesoft's products are used daily by leading corporations, national Patent Offices, IP Firms - relied upon by patent, engineering and chemical research specialists around the world.
http://www.minesoft.com

About RWS Group:
RWS was founded more than 40 years ago and is one of the world's leading scientific and technical patent search and translation companies, with well-established offices in the UK, US, Europe and Japan.

About WIPO:
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is a specialized agency of the UN dedicated to developing a balanced and accessible international intellectual property (IP) system which rewards creativity, stimulates innovation and contributes to economic development while safeguarding the public interest. It has a mandate from its 184 member states to promote the protection of intellectual property throughout the world through cooperation among states and in collaboration with other stakeholders.
WIPO's activities fall broadly into three areas, namely, the progressive development of international IP law, IP capacity-building programs to support the efficient use of IP, particularly in developing countries, and services to industry which facilitate the process of obtaining IP rights in multiple countries and alternative dispute resolution options for private parties.
http://www.wipo.int