This second edition provides a systematic introduction to the work and
views of the emerging patent-search research and innovation communities
as well as an overview of what has been achieved and, perhaps even more
importantly, of what remains to be achieved. It revises many of the
contributions of the first edition and adds a significant number of new
ones.
The first part "Introduction to Patent Searching" includes two overview
chapters on the peculiarities of patent searching and on contemporary
search technology respectively, and thus sets the scene for the
subsequent parts. The second part on "Evaluating Patent Retrieval" then
begins with two chapters dedicated to patent evaluation campaigns,
followed by two chapters discussing complementary issues from the
perspective of patent searchers and from the perspective of related
domains, notably legal search. "High Recall Search" includes four
completely new chapters dealing with the issue of finding only the
relevant documents in a reasonable time span. The last (and with six
papers the largest) part on "Special Topics in Patent Information
Retrieval" covers a large spectrum of research in the patent field, from
classification and image processing to translation. Lastly, the book is
completed by an outlook on open issues and future research.
Several of the chapters have been jointly written by intellectual
property and information retrieval experts. However, members of both
communities with a background different to that of the primary author
have reviewed the chapters, making the book accessible to both the
patent search community and to the information retrieval research
community. It also not only offers the latest findings for academic
researchers, but is also a valuable resource for IP professionals
wanting to learn about current IR approaches in the patent domain.