Michele Fattori’s scientific contributions

The Confederacy of European Patent Information User Groups (CEPIUG) was founded in 2008 to promote the sharing of experiences and expertise in patent searching across Europe. CEPIUG currently comprises patent information user groups of seven different European countries and is, of course, open to new members. Besides the exchange of information, CEPIUG also seeks to promote the coordination of European efforts in the fields of education and training of new entrants into the profession of patent searching, as well as trying to identify a suitable certification scheme for patent information professionals.

The Italian Patent Information Users Group (AIDB--Associazione Italiana Documentalisti Brevettuali) was founded on February 24, 2004. At the end of that year, AIDB had 58 members, coming from different environments such as industry, private practice, public institutions, and content providers. During its first months of existence, AIDB coordinated various activities such as checking the extent and quality of documentation services offered by the Italian Patent and Trade Mark Office (UIBM), and promoting discussions about suitable certification schemes for professional patent searchers. In November 2004, AIDB organized a two-day national patent information conference, focused on the business impact of patent information and on the certification of patent searchers.

Professional patent searchers are traditionally rather suspicious of the alleged "black box" effect inherently attached to intelligent software engines relying upon linguistic technologies for patent analysis and mapping. In this article, the authors propose that such prejudices can be overcome by setting a realistic business objective while experimenting with these new linguistic tools, as well as by applying serious methodology for validating the results of the analysis. The strengths and weaknesses of a particular text mining tool are assessed with reference to a practical business case in the field of packaging technology, and a comparison of the outcome of such an analysis with a traditional one, carried out using conventional patent classifications, is also described.