Patent Family Tagging

What is family tagging & how can it help you?

Laura Smith avatar
Written by Laura Smith
Updated over a week ago

What is Patent Family Tagging?

Tagging allows you to assign pre-determined values or ‘tags’ to patent families or groups of patent families for either your own or for colleagues reference. It allows you to do this quickly and easily on the platform itself, so no export/import into different tools is required. The tags can then be very easily searched for and reviewed, and even added into a new report, all within the platform.

Video Walk through

Different types of Tagging available and use cases

Tagging can help with several workflows and you're able to be totally creative with how you set up and distribute them, but here are some typical use cases:

Relevancy Tagging:

A classic group of tags to include would be a grading or ranking of relevancy. An example could be that you have the results of a classifier report, and you wish to work through the results to highlight those patent families of high, medium or low importance. The grading system can be set up exactly how you like. A simple relevant ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or a score from 1-10 being typical examples. Alternatively, you may wish to tag those families in a particular classifier score range for review by your colleagues, for example '0.5-0.6 score', '0.7-0.8 score', '0.8-0.9 score and so on.

This work could be applied to numerous projects, or across numerous teams, and the setup is dependent on the level of scrutiny the project calls for.

Please contact support@cipher.ai if you have any issues or queries around the setup of your tags within the platform.

Category Tagging:

The next example of family tagging relates to categories, and could relate to a specific sub-technology within a report such as a science application, or a key ingredient for example. This is particularly useful in reports using broader classifiers, where you can place interesting families into tagged groups for further review.

This categorisation is particularly useful when sharing patent families with colleagues working in different areas, or subsets of particular technologies. Previously you would need to download the data into excel/csv, whereas now you can do it directly in the platform and share tagged lists with others. We can call these tags anything you would like so please do speak with us so we can set this up for you.

Bookmark Tagging:

This suggestion helps in those moments where you are looking through a report and notice a particularly interesting family, whether it be from a competitor who you weren’t aware were filing in a particular area or even one of your own you weren’t aware of. Tagging as ‘interesting’ keeps these notable families in an easy to access and easy to share place.

Free Text Tagging

This allows for individual users to create and share custom tags within their organisation. Tags are not automatically shared to other users but they can either be set up as private or public within their organisation, you can also share them with specific individuals (other users of the platform). Any time a tag is added to a patent family the taggers username will be attached to it. This means any user can see the owner of that tag.

Below is an example of the types of tag we have available.

Video Walk Through

How to create and apply tags

Video Walk Through

The process of applying tags can be done from any ‘data list view’. The families list can be reached by clicking on any data set from any chart (this will provide the corresponding list of families that you've just clicked into). Alternatively you can access all families within the report, including expired & rejected, by clicking on the list view from your report (below).

From this view there are two ways you can browse patent families and begin to apply your tags. The method most suited to you will depend on the task itself, taking into account the number of patent families in your report or dataset that you would like to review, and how much the individual families need to be scrutinised.

Bulk Tagging:

The first option is bulk tagging. This could be when you want to -

  • Tag all families that you've clicked through to from particular chart i.e. all assets of company A that are granted in the US,

  • If you are able to identify key things about a family without going into the details perhaps through a key word search in the title and abstract,

  • Tag all families with a classifier score of 0.8-0.9 for example.

Once tagging is enabled in your account you will see tick boxes appear to the left of all patent families in a list view. To select all, click the box at the top of the column, or tick the individual families (as per below)

Once you have selected the relevant family/families, open up the ‘tags’ dropdown (top right corner) which will display all of the tags you have set up. Select the one that you want to apply.

Individual Family Tagging:

If you wish to review more detail of the patent family, you may want to click into it to review the title and the abstract first and read the patent. Click on the Family ID of the particular family you’re interested in, to open it up.

Initially, your tags will be hidden, so to display your tagging options, please click the tags icon (top right, highlighted (1)). This will show all of them (2)

We have included the three categories/use cases for tagging that we mentioned above: bookmarked, fruit and ranking. You’ll see in this section there is also a search bar which relates specifically to the contents of your tags. This will come into play if you have multiple tags and need to find what you’re looking for quickly.

You will also see differently shaped boxes in different categories. E.g. The ‘ranking’ tags are circles, denoting that you can only make one selection in this category, whereas the squares in 'bookmarked' and 'fruit' allow you to select multiple.

This again revolves around the types of tags you are using.

In a ranking use case, a singular option is used (when selecting more would be contradictory), whereas the fruit selection (a substitute here for narrow technology areas), the ability to select multiple makes sense as some families could be parts of two technologies for example.

Another benefit of this view, is that you can click through from family to family rather than having to go back to the data view. To do this, scroll left or right from the top right (3).

Tagging Rights in your Organisation

One of the key benefits of the new tagging tool, is the ability to share your tags, or more specifically your tagged patent families with colleagues, seamlessly integrating the use of the platform into your workflow and avoiding having to export / import and work across multiple platforms. You can:

Easily generate a new report from tagged families, and share this report with your colleagues via the share report icon. Tagged families are available from the 'new report' tile under the 'tagged families' tab. Reports can then be shared via the share icon in the top right of your report:

OR

When family tagging is setup, you can enable your colleagues to have read and write access to create their own tags OR have read access to the 'tagged families' tab in the 'new report' option to access previously tagged assets (see below).

This means that they can generate their own reports from tagged data (they won't have access to tag families themselves, unless you set this up).

Video Walk Through

Filtering by Tags

In the patent family list view, you can choose to filter the subset by Tag type. Filtering by tags is useful for quickly finding patent families that have been previously identified as relevant to your research. This can be done by first clicking the drop-down menu labelled Family Tags:

Once the menu has opened you can now select the tick box to begin filtering by tags. Next choose multiple or individual tags you wish to see in the patent family list.

To see what tags have been assigned to a patent family, you will need to have Family tags selected in the Column drop-down menu.

If you wish to see a quick list of the tags associated with a patent family, you can hover your mouse over the cell within the column and a pop-up will appear. Here you can also see which user attached the tag.

Exporting Tagged Assets

This also lives within the data page of any report. Once you are looking at a list of your tagged families, you must make sure you have the 'Family Tags' column visible, but selecting it from the columns dropdown:

Only the columns you have selected will be present in your export, so select any others that will be useful.

Once you're ready to download, head to the top right hand corner of the page where you'll fine the red 'Export' button. Here you download your tagged assets into csv or excel:

Need help? Request support and we'll connect you with an expert.

Can't wait? Contact us on 02039099222 or email support@cipher.ai

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