New patents and patent applications are published by the Patent Offices usually weekly. You can easily set up a monitoring profile that allows you to see if the newly published documents are relevant to you.
IPRally has both a classical Boolean monitoring functionality, as well as an AI based monitoring functionality. The former is ideal for e.g. competitor and/or keyword monitoring, whereas the latter serves well for smart technology monitoring. You can also supplement AI monitoring with Boolean filters.
Monitoring in a nutshell
IPRally has two ways of monitoring:
AI search query based monitoring (with optional Boolean filtering)
Boolean search query based monitoring (part of Boolean Beta release)
Starting monitoring
From the user's perspective, the AI and Boolean monitoring work in a similar way:
Make a search according to your preferred search method
Check that the search results match your needs, and adjust search parameters if necessary
Turn on Monitoring to open a new Monitoring Tab, where now documents will be collected, and start receiving weekly notifications of new patent families that match the search parameters.
Note: We run monitoring queries every Monday evening CET and send
Monitoring e-mail reports every Tuesday morning CET.
In the first monitoring report, you may not get any results at all, or
there may be an excess amount of results compared duplicate results. This
depends on the exact starting time of monitoring, and relates to the data
ingestion cycles from our patent data provider. See also FAQ section
below.
Key logic of monitoring: first-match-in-the-family reporting
Both AI and Boolean monitoring are patent family based:
You will be notified of the first publication of the family that matches the search parameters.
Subsequent family members will not be reported (i.e. members of families already published at the time of starting the monitoring or already reported in earlier monitoring runs). This is to avoid polluting the search reports with duplicate hits from the same family.
Note: Upper Publication Date search field (Boolean) or filter filed (AI)
will not be taken into account in monitoring (as that would prevent new
publications from being reported).
Difference between AI and Boolean monitoring
The main difference between AI and Boolean monitoring is in the criteria based on which new families are reported.
In Boolean monitoring, documents that match the Boolean search parameters will be reported. That is, it is a very classical Boolean monitoring function.
You can find the explanation of IPRally's Boolean syntax in this Help Center article
In AI monitoring, documents whose AI score is higher than the score of the lowest-scoring document in the original search, will be reported. In other words: If the new document would have earned its place in the original search, your will get notified of it. You can affect the "sensitivity" of monitoring by selecting the number of search results (25/50/100/250/500). Any Boolean filters that have been set, also affect the AI monitoring.
You can find more information on different ways of AI searching in Help Center
Note: Boolean monitoring is recommended for e.g. strict competitor and/or
keyword based monitoring (example Boolean query: PA:microsoft AND TAC:
("machine learning" OR "artificial intelligence" OR "neural network"))
AI monitoring is more fuzzy, and ideal for technology monitoring (example
free-text query: "car seat having a backrest with ventilation channels,
and a control unit for adjusting air flow in the ventilation channels")
Detailed instructions
This is how to use the monitoring function (AI monitoring as example):
Make a search case either by creating a graph, using a publication number, full text search or using an image.
Inspect the search results to see if they are relevant and if necessary, adjust the filters and/or use Zoom to favorites to further focus the search on your most relevant technology
When you are happy with the profile, press the Monitoring eye-icon to the left of Case Actions or choose "Turn monitoring on" from the Case actions menu of the search case (this will ‘lock’ the search including refinements):
You will now see a new Monitoring tab in your results toolbar. Within the Monitoring tab, you can:
See the monitoring start date and the dates of the last and next monitoring runs
Customise your notification cadence
Share with other users
(if subscribed to Classifiers) auto-tag new results with trained Classifiers
In the following weeks, the Monitoring tab will be populated by new publications that match the profile and fit into the number of maximum results selected in the filters.
You will also receive monitoring e-mails based on the cadence set (see above), and link through to IPRally by selecting the relevant heading:
If the search case is shared with others, they'll also receive an email notification as setup by the case owner.
In the Monitoring tab, you can also
Turn off monitoring, whereby the you can edit the monitoring parameters (i.e. the graph and/or Boolean fields), while maintaining the previously accumulated results in the Monitoring tab.
Reset monitoring, which deletes the previously accumulated results but continues monitoring with the same parameters
You will also see active monitoring cases, including the number of unread monitoring results, in the My Search Cases list as a badge. Clicking the badge opens the Monitoring tab. If you have many search cases, you can use the filter them to only see the Monitored ones, using the filtering icon at the top of the list.
Within the Monitoring tab, you can also review the results using the IPRally review tooling, including Bibliographic data and Document views, Highlights, Ask AI and Smart filters, Favorites, Commenting, Tagging, etc.
For more information on the Review features, see Processing the Results and Ask AI sections in the Help Center.
Note: If Zoom to Favorites is enabled on an AI Search Case and you add
Favorites in the Monitoring tab, those favorites are taken into account in
the next monitoring run – you can easily Favorite any monitoring results
to build a more focused monitoring case that "evolves" over time.
Monitoring FAQ
Q. How does monitoring work?
A. The search case that you are monitoring is run according to the cadence you have chosen, either weekly, monthly or quarterly. Documents that fulfill all the following rules are added to monitoring:
they match the search parameters
see above for details of the logic and differences between AI and Boolean monitoring
they, or any of their family members, are not reported earlier as monitoring hits
they, or any of their family members, were not part of the initial result set
Q. Why do I sometimes see publications that belong to a family already reported or in the original result set?
A. In some cases, we get family IDs of new publications from our data provider with a delay. Without the family ID, we cannot reliably determine if the publication belongs to an already known family. In that case, to be on the safe side, we report the document, in case it matches the search query. We aim at fast imports and improving the data ingestion cycles so that the amount of duplicate hits would be as small as possible.
Q. Can I share my monitoring cases and notifications?
A. YES! All users who have a monitoring case shared by the case owner will receive e-mails and have access to the monitoring tab. Please see more around Sharing via our Sharing Article
Q. Can I export my monitoring results?
A. Yes, IPRally's Customizable exports works in every document list view, including the Monitoring tab.
Q. Can I use Ask AI and Smart filters for the monitoring results?
A. Yes, both single-patent and multi-patent Ask AI, as well as Smart filters, are available in the Monitoring tab.
Q. Is there a limit on monitoring cases?
A. Currently there are no limits on the amount of Monitoring Cases setup per user.
Q. How can I find my monitoring cases?
A. Monitoring cases are listed in the My Search Cases list, and have an additional eye icon indicating that Monitoring is active for the case. You can also Filter the case list using the filter icon above the list, or search based on the name of the case.
Q. Will changes/comments/favorites on shared Monitoring Cases be visible to all users?
A. YES, any comment, tag, favorite, view on a monitoring case is visible to all users (from Case Owner to Shared User). For comments, just ensure that the sharing setting of the comment is "Shared" and not "Private".
Q. Will Monitoring update me on legal status changes, or changes to old publications already in my case?
A. Currently only the first matching publications of each family will be reported. Each family is therefore reported only once, when its first matching family member is found. E.g. re-publications of grants of application publications already reported, or family member in other countries, are not reported again. If you wish to search for older publications, you should always use the ordinary Search patents button.
Note: The Monitoring function automatically utilizes the newest versions of IPRally algorithms, so there is no need to re-run your search cases.. However, no older publications than when you first initiated Monitoring or cleared all results will be shown. If you wish to search for older publications, you should always use the ordinary Search patents button.
Happy monitoring!