The Importance Of Global IP Data Access And Accuracy

Global intellectual property (IP) data continues to expand at a historic rate, with an ever-growing volume of patent, trademark, design, scientific, business and other relevant data now available to IP teams. For those to access those vast datasets efficiently, however, they also need access to reliable, integrated, and time-saving tools, as Questel’s Amandine Kandi-Masakidi explains.  

As global IP databases have grown, so has the importance of IP intelligence technologies. By combining global IP data with legal, scientific, corporate, and commercial intelligence, and time-saving automation, these platforms provide users with a comprehensive, connected view of the industry landscape, helping clients to identify brand innovation opportunities, assess competitive threats, and make more informed strategic decisions.

However, with many IP intelligence platforms now on offer in the market, how do you ensure you choose the right solution for your needs? For nearly 50 years, Questel has been a consistent watchdog and innovator within the IP industry, with proven leadership in gathering and organizing data across all types of IP asset categories. In this article, we set out the key benefits of our solutions, from comprehensive datasets to artificial intelligence (AI) assistance. 

Access to Unprecedented Global IP Data Volumes for Patents, Trademarks and More 

For patents, Questel’s IP database (accessed via Orbit Intelligence) includes 93 million patent families and 180 million publications, encompassing the 111 patent-issuing authorities which account for over 99.7% of global patent application activity. Beyond core patent records, Orbit has been enriched with critical patent-related data including legal status, litigations and opposition proceedings, licensing agreements, chemical structures, biological sequences, standards essential patents (SEP) and essentiality assessments. Questel’s patent dataset is further enhanced with complementary non-patent information, such as corporate ownership structures, scientific publications, government-funded projects, clinical trials, and defensive publications. 

On the trademark side, Questel’s enriched database (available in Markify) covers 192 trademark issuing authorities/240+ countries worldwide, including all 50 United States, and includes more than 192 million trademarks. By including state-level trademark coverage for the US, Questel enables customers to identify trademarks registered locally, giving a stronger, more comprehensive view of the trademark landscape and reducing the risk of potential conflicts. To accommodate the incredibly IP-prolific pharmaceutical industry, Questel’s trademark database also incorporates vertical pharma databases with 15 official sources and 76 pharma in-use databases.
 
In addition to patents and trademarks, Questel tracks more than 250 million domain names, 90+ jurisdictions for industrial designs, and 100 online real-time download resources for main marketplaces, social media, and search engines. 

Consistently, Continuously Building IP Data Resources 

Questel did not accomplish this IP data leadership overnight — the work has been constant, intense and ongoing without an endpoint. The company’s global team of data and IP experts continuously work to prepare, collate, verify, and contextualize publicly available IP data. Much happens behind the scenes to deliver comprehensive, accurate, and timely coverage. 

In particular, Questel data teams have developed the specialized expertise required to process IP data accurately and meaningfully. Collectively, their role spans the entire data lifecycle to include sourcing, curating, and maintaining information from multiple origins. Data sources range from IP offices to data providers, as well as public repositories. Structuring and centralizing that information into dedicated internal databases ensures the provision of reliable, consistent, and enriched data. Incoming complex and often inconsistent datasets must be transformed into clean, standardized formats that support accurate analysis. Within the Questel ecosystem, all IP content is translated into English to create a common search language and enhance access to information, even from non-Latin jurisdictions. 

Leveraging AI to Improve IP Data 

AI plays a significant role in Questel’s data operations by extracting meaningful content from unstructured sources, cleaning and refining data in accordance with rigorous quality standards, and translating content into English. This enables clients to search patent data across all 111 countries using English-language queries while benefiting from more accessible and higher-quality data.

Our cross-platform AI agent Sophia provides clients with targeted AI features to facilitate and improve IP search and analysis. These include our natural language search assistant, Sophia Query, our semantic search agent, Sophia Search, and interactive AI chatbots for document review, summarization, mapping, analysis, and reporting.

How to Maximize Questel’s IP Data for a Competitive Edge 

Questel's unmatched IP datasets provide a unique advantage for clients by ensuring access to the latest, most comprehensive information available, including: 

• Proprietary patent family construction rules to deliver precise, comprehensive, and dynamic patent groupings, simplifying portfolio analysis to ensure up-to-date coverage of evolving rights and exposure of jurisdictional legal impacts, which traditional family structures often overlook.
• Manually curated Standard Essential Patent (SEP) data and essentiality analysis for cellular communication and Wi-Fi technologies, enabling users to move from questions to answers in minutes when negotiating licenses, supporting litigation strategies, and monitoring competitors.
• Unique content generated from Questel’s proprietary dataset to support IP rights discovery, including dates calculation (expected expiration dates and opposition dates), taking into account various legal events, and national and regional specifics, patent summaries and enhanced abstracts to help users quickly understand the scope and relevance of patents, extraction of concepts and measurement units to provide additional search criteria, and patent embeddings to improve targeted searches.
• AI-powered image search for trademarks and industrial designs, leveraging Questel’s proprietary dataset to identify visually similar assets with greater accuracy and coverage than public sources.

In this way, clients using Questel’s software solutions backed by our data benefit from a comprehensive, connected view of the innovation landscape. By combining IP data with legal, scientific, corporate, and commercial intelligence, software platforms such as Orbit Intelligence and Markify enable clients to identify innovation opportunities, assess competitive threats, reduce due diligence efforts, and make more informed strategic decisions. Instead of piecing together fragmented data sources, Questel clients can access a single source of truth to inform IP, R&D, licensing, M&A, and investment decisions. 

Expanding Global IP Datasets in Asia and Beyond 

As large as Questel’s IP datasets already are, we are committed to incorporating more available IP information from worldwide sources. At present, not all countries and regions of the world have achieved the same level of digitization, and some IP offices still have limited capabilities for publishing or sharing their IP data.

Recently, Questel entered into a breakthrough partnership with ASEAN IP offices to provide ASEAN’s member states with access to its IP data and software. According to a public statement from WIPO: “The result of the agreement will be twofold; allowing for better availability and quality of ASEAN IP data while also enhancing the strength and examination capabilities of ASEAN IP offices. The sharing of data will take place exclusively through the ASEAN IP Register. Users, including inventors, businesses, and IP professionals, may continue to access ASEAN IP data through the ASEAN IP Register on the ASEAN IP Portal.” 

In exchange for access to Questel’s tools, the ASEAN IP member states – primarily covering Southeast Asia – will provide privileged access to their IP data. The ASEAN IP collaboration will enable Questel to provide more timely, consistent, and reliable IP data to Questel clients from participating ASEAN IP member states.

Future Expansion and Innovation for IP Data 

Drawing on our nearly 50 years of experience, we are continuing our efforts to break new ground in expanding the IP data landscape. We expect our proprietary IP dataset to continue improving in terms of coverage, quality and breadth of information. This growth will be driven by sustained investments, increasing availability of digitized IP data, expanded collaborations with IP offices through data-sharing initiatives, integration of complementary IP-related datasets, and the continued evolution of AI capabilities.

Questel has made incredible strides in pioneering data development for patents, trademarks and other IP assets. With innovation occurring across an ever-expanding global landscape and new IP information being generated every day, there is still much to uncover, analyze and learn. With energy and enthusiasm, Questel looks forward to continuing this exciting journey to achieve its goal of being the top IP data provider in the world. 

Author: Amandine Kandi-Masakidi