Report:TotalPatent/Viewing Results/Saving Results

Saving Results

Saving results in TotalPatent is done through the use of saved results “folders,” called Work Folders. Within Work Folders, the user can use the same delivery options located in the results list to store and share documents. Some features unique to the Work Folders that are not available in the hit list interface include removing family or exact duplicates and generating reports. Up to 20,000 records may be saved into a Work Folder.^[1]

Viewing contents of a Work Folder, with the "Change Folder" list open to view all available folders.

Work Folders are accessible from the "Work Folders" tab at the top of the TotalPatent interface. Select the "Change Folders" option in the top left corner of the screen to open a list of all available folders. Work Folders can be created, renamed, copied, deleted, forwarded to other TotalPatent subscribers, and sorted within the list alphabetically, by date created, or by entry count. After a March 2012 TotalPatent update, the "Change Folder" list now shows the number of records in the Folder in parentheses beside the folder title, and the list of folders defaults to the most recently created folder displayed at the top.^[2]

The Sort Work Folder dialog box.

When naming or renaming folders, users can also add additional comments about the folder that will be displayed under the "My Comments" field for the selected folder in the "Changer Folder" list.

Naming and adding comments to a Work Folder.

Patent documents within a Work Folder may be deleted, copied, or moved to another Work Folder. All of the Delivery Options present when working with a result set are also available in Work Folders: email documents, print, download, purchase file histories, and purchase human translations. See the screenshot below for an example of what these functions look like on the Work Folder interface.

All options for renaming, deleting, copying, forwarding, viewing, and exporting Work Folders and records within Work Folders.

The user may also add private comments (separate from Notes) to individual records in a Work Folder that can be read later. According to the help guide, "Notes added to patents are visible across the entire user group and are searchable via the Notes search form, while comments are private and are viewable only to the specific user that created them."^[3]

A private comment added to a record in a Work Folder.

Work folders also offer two important features, only one of which is available from the hit list page: the ability to sort records (which is also available, with a wider variety of sorting options, on the hit list page), and the ability to remove duplicates anywhere in the list or remove only duplicates within a patent family.^[4] The option to remove duplicates is available directly on the Work Folder interface, but it isn't available directly from the hit list.

• The sorting feature allows users to arrange records by publication date, publication number, assignee, normalized assignee, inventor, “class” (meaning first “main” class listed: US first, and then IPC) and into patent families. It is unclear what type of patent family definition is being used during the sorting process. It should be noted that a broader range of sorting options are available through the hit list.

• The “remove” feature allows users to eliminate 1) exact duplicates or 2) family duplicates from the saved results set. It is again unclear which family definition TotalPatent is using to de-duplicate, since it offers both the simple or extended INPADOC family data in its family display from the record view page. For more information, see Family Search Features. The "remove" option is only directly available through the Work Folder interface.

Finally, like in the results list, users can select which fields they want to display while viewing saved records in the Work Folder list. Available fields for display include:

• Abstract
• Application/Filing Date
• Application Number
• Assignees
• Assignees (Normalized)
• Classes
• Clipped Image
• Comments (Private)
• Inventors
• Notes
• Patent Family
• Priority Data

As of July 2012, the following functionalities are now available for Work Folders:^[5]

• Search within Work Folders - Users can now search within a folder, similar to the "Narrow" search feature for the hit list. The search form supports all search segments, logical and proximity operators, commands, truncation, etc.
• Create Subfolders - Export up to 20,000 records from the main Work Folder to a subfolder. There is no limit on the number of subfolders that can be created. Functionalities like Sort, Field Selection, De-Duplicate, Report, Export, Analyze, etc. are supported for sub-folders, and the user can also search within a subfolder.
• Download claims from a Work Folder to .CSV - The user can export all claims (maximum 20,000 records) from a Work Folder into a .CSV file. The user can also export Independent Claims from US applications, from 2001 forward, into a .CSV. There is an option to truncate Independent and All Claims to first 32,000 characters.

Editor's Note:

Overall, the result saving features in TotalPatent are serviceable, but there are a few disadvantages. First, in the current system design, ‘Recent Searches’ are retained for 72 hours, meaning that if the user forgets to save searches into a permanent ‘Saved Search’ folder, then after 72 hours the searches will be lost and will have to be re-entered from scratch.^[3] In general, the automatic deletion of unsaved searches is beneficial because it will prevent the session log from becoming clogged with old strings. Projects may occasionally last longer than 72 hours, but it is useful that the timespan for saved Recent Searches has been expanded from 24 to 72 hours.

Another disadvantage is the fact that searches cannot be conducted within saved work folders. This feature would be particularly useful when working with large sets of saved documents, for in-depth analysis projects. The lack of this feature has been decried by users of Thomson’s Delphion product, so it’s reasonable to think that this will prove a drawback for TotalPatent as well.

The Work Folders in TotalPatent may not be combined using Boolean operators in a simple fashion, a functionality that is available in competitor’s products and allows users to combine results sets with Boolean operators, just as a searcher would combine search strategies. This is useful for merging folders together (OR), subtracting unwanted results from a saved folder (NOT), and/or creating a new folder with results common to multiple parent folders (AND). The "Compare" option under the Analytics tab may be used to view result sets combined using AND/NOT, but viewing the unique AND/NOT result sets is achieved in a rather round-about way (discussed in the next section). The developers have also added a “delete/copy/move” menu to the Work Folder interface as a substitute for the Boolean operators, which allows users to create a new folder out of a sub-set of selected records, by either copying or moving the records to another folder, or to delete selected records. This menu might be used to create an "OR" combination of folders by selecting all records from two separate folders and copying them into a new folder. However, it would be best if a simple option for combination of sets using Boolean operators was available, instead of the round-about options available through the "Compare" feature and “delete/copy/move” menu.