Ambercite improves search quality by up to 46%: Independent study finds
Melbourne, Australia - An independent study by Canadian patent search specialists Riahi Patents Inc has found that using Ambercite can strengthen the quality of a patent search by an average of 25%, and up to 46%. This finding was based on a systematic testing process that included comprehensive testing on ten different inventions by a team of experienced patent searchers.
Introduction
Ambercite is a unique searching process that can find patents missed by conventional searching. This is something that our many clients have recognised, and we have published many case studies confirming this.
But has anyone independent proven that?
Yes, in fact. Last year the Austrian patent office showed how Ambercite outperformed the semantic search engines it was benchmarked against.
And now the Canadian based patent search firm Riahi Patents Inc has just provided further quantitative evidence that combining Ambercite and conventional search can improve the quality of results .
What Riahi did
So how do you quantify the quality and improvement of patent searching tools?
This is not a simple question, but Riahi developed a rigorous approach, with the following steps:
Riahi identified 10 inventions, and for each of these 10 inventions, identified 10 important features.
A team from Riahi spent 4 hours searching for prior art for each invention, using a conventional keyword and class code searching process. From this process, they identified what they thought were the five closest prior art patents.
For these five closest prior art documents, they determined which of the 10 target features they were able to find, leading to a table looking like this (the 1 to 10 on the top row is the designated feature:
4. Riahi added up the total score (26 in the example above) in this case, and then divided this score by the maximum possible score (50) to come up with a final ‘Search Score’ of 0.52 (i.e. 52% of the maximum score).
5. They repeated this process for the 10 different inventions.
The final average score was 0.58 over the 10 inventions, when conventional patent searching was used. The lowest score was 0.42, and the highest was 0.76.
Is an average Search Score of 0.58 reasonable? It seems very reasonable to me - we all know that patent searching is a difficult process, and we can’t always find the prior art we are looking for.
How Riahi compared the enhancement of Ambercite to conventional searching
Riahi then ran another 10 comparisons patent searches, this time using the conventional searching tools and Ambercite together in order to see if there was a significant difference in quality. This is how we recommend to our clients that they should use Ambercite - as a complement to their existing searching approaches).
The results are shown below in two graphs:
This graph above shows the
Variability in search outcomes, which we have all seen before in patent searching
How combining Ambercite with Boolean searching was able to improve search outcomes in every case.
The second graph shows the range in search improvements
In summary, the improvement in patent searching ranged between 12% and 46%, with an average improvement of 25%. This improvement was statistically significant (p=0.012).
What does this tell us?
Ambercite has long promoted itself as being complementary to traditional patent searching - and this independent study has provided statistically significant results to confirm this.
In other words: “Ambercite - No search is complete without it”
OK, Riahi has proven that Ambercite can significantly enhance patent searching. But doesn’t increase the effort involved?
No, not really, is the answer.
As we all know, conventional keyword and class code searching can take many hours to do. In contrast, Ambercite can provide a ranked list of relevant results in seconds. So there is very little additional effort involved.
In fact there can be a reduction in overall effort compared to using conventional searching alone, due to the greater productivity of a combination approach (as a simple analogy, a carpenter with a hammer and screwdriver is more productive than a carpenter with just one of these tools).
Do you want to double-check your own search results?
Ambercite offers free trials, but to get the most of this, please contact us for a demonstration. You can try either option via the links below:
Acknowledgements - Ambercite thanks Riahi Patents Inc for permission to share these results, and for putting in the effort to compare Ambercite to other patent searching approaches. These results are taken from a wider study, which Riahi will publish in due course.
Independence - While Riahi has provided with full access and training to Ambercite as part of this trial, no other payments or incentives where provided to Riahi in relation to this matter.