[1]Dinesh Vadhia, CEO of Xyggy Corporation, gave us an early look at a new patent search tool Xyggy Patent [2], which allows you to search for similar patents using known patents as the query.
The queried patents are selected by patent number or patent title and the results are returned in ranked order according to their relevance to the referenced patent.
“Our paradigm for search is based on the fundamental idea that search should be item-based not just text-based, and that a query based on items provides substantial advantages and additional information as compared to queries involving only keywords.” ~Xyggy Patent
As an example, we did a search for the Bayer patent for drospirenone (U.S. Pat. No. 6,787,531 [3]). The search box has an auto-complete function so entering “6787531” brings up the patent but entering just the title “Pharmaceutical composition for use as a contraceptive” also brought up the correct patent.
In a comparison, a search of Google Patents brought up the ‘531 patent and just three related patents, ranked according to popularity where Xyggy Patent found 19 pages of patents and ranked them based upon how similar they are to the Bayer patent.
The search results are presented as titles only but a mouse over brings up a pop-up box with various pertinent details like the title and a portion of the abstract.
The coverage for Xyggy Patent is US patents from 1976 to end-June ’09 and they’ll begin regular updates in September. It is clearly still in the early stages and mentions expanding to further types of searches including dating services and biotechnology sequences. Whether those two things should ever come from the same entity we’ll leave for another day.
Disclaimer: No offense meant to Will Smith [4].