An evaluation of an interactive federated patent search system

Abstract

Patent search tasks are challenging and often require many hours or even days to be completed. Patent search systems that integrate multiple search tools could assist patent examiners to complete the demanding patent search tasks by using the set of search tools most suitable for the task at hand. PerFed- Pat is an interactive patent search system designed on this principle and based on the federated search approach and the ezDL framework. PerFedPat provides core services to search multiple online patent resources, while hiding complexity from the end user. The extensible architecture of the system enables the integration and parallel use of multiple search tools. In this paper, we present part of a user study of the PerFedPat system and we also discuss the results, mostly focused on the research question: could the patent examiners efficiently use a patent search system that integrates multiple resources, search tools and UIs?.