When patents are examined in patent offices around the world a special group of patent classifiers as well as the examiners classify the patents.  They do a remarkable job in my opinion.  Classification searching is the best, and really only way, to do a credible job of isolating technologies for patent landscapes and comparing two portfolios without doing extensive manual classification yourself.  I'll just say it, a lot of patent search professionals don't trust, don't like and rarely use classification searching.  While I think it is a big mistake, I understand it.  Classification analysis is not handled well in other tools that I have seen.

Clearly, all patents are not classified perfectly, and some patents aren't classified at all and dumped into catch-all classes, such as the 1/1 class in the US Classification system.  But with the vagaries of human language it is your best bet.

AcclaimIP handles classification in very powerful ways as will be explained in this and other chapters of the Help Manual.

The QueryFlow tool differs from the Keyword Analyzer in several ways:

• QueryFlow uses a powerful algorithm called TF/IDF (Term Frequency/Inverse Document Frequency) to find "important" terms in the source document.
• QueryFlow defaults to a Boolean OR operator compared to the Boolean AND in the Keyword Tool.
• Terms are weighted using Query Flow.

An "important" term is defined as a term that appears in the patent with a high frequency but does not appear very often in the entire patent corpus.  As a result, TF/IDF doesn't need stop terms.  Terms like the, and, but, with etc appear so often in the corpus that they are never identified as "important" terms.  Even "patentese" terms such as method, apparatus, system appear so frequently in patent data that the algorithm never deems them "important."

Because of the weighting, and the nature of the Boolean OR operator, QueryFlow does a much better job of creating inclusive lists.  But the list can be very large.  The most relevant patents will be displayed at the top of the search result list.

Term weighting boosts a term's relevance in the search results and increases the overall precision of your query.  Patents with higher weighted terms appear higher in the search results.  Weighting terms does NOT impact the recall, which means the same number of documents will be returned by the search engine no matter what weighting you use.  But the order in which they appear will be affected.

In this short article we list the settable options in AcclaimIP. The Preferences window contains a row of tabs where you to set preferences for different part of the application.

Searching Tab:

1. Collections: Choose which data sets you want to search by default.
2. Date Range: Pick the range and date type to search by default. The most common is Last 20 Years and File Date.
3. Word Stemming: Choose whether or not you want AcclaimIP to include stemmed results. For example if you searched on "Computer" then stemming on would return documents containing "compute," "computing," "computed," etc.

Look & Feel Tab:

1. Set Background Color: You can change the color of the blue (by default) desktop by choosing another color from the color picker. If you have a very precise color in mind, you can type in the hexidecimal value for that color (e.g. #2d683a)
2. Upload Background Image: If you want your own custom wallpaper on the AcclaimIP desktop. Click the Browse Image Library button, then upload your image to the library. Once uploaded, check the "Use Background Image" box.
3. Themes: There are two color themes to the AcclaimIP application. The default is the light blue. There is also a gray version and an accessibility option for those with low vision.
4. Printed Reports: In future versions of AcclaimIP, you'll be able to output custom reports with your color scheme, logo and footer text. For now these features are not available.

Result Grids Tab:

1. Default Columns: Select which columns you want to appear in your search result by default. You can always add any column on the fly.
2. Sort Order: For optimal results, we recommend Relevance/Descending as the default sort order. But for certain types of searches you may wish to change the default sort order.
3. Width and Height: Change default size of the Search Result Window by setting the width in pixels.
4. Results per Page: Set the number of results you want to see before you have to paginate to see the next set of results.
5. Auto-Saved Searches: Choose how many recent searches you want AcclaimIP to remember by default.
6. Clear Searches: Tell AcclaimIP if you want to clear all your searches when you log out.
7. Set Refinement Panel: The refinement panel contains the default filters on the left side of the Search Result window. Choose whether you want it to open by default. We recommend you set it to Open unless you are using a very small screen.
8. Keyword Highlighting: Tell AcclaimIP if you want keywords in your searches to be highlighted by default. You can turn on/off highlighting on the fly. Note too: You set Keyword highlighting separately for the Document Details window.

Doc Details Tab:

1. Width and Height: Set the default size of the Document Details window in pixels.
2. No. Recently Viewed: AcclaimIP will remember the last documents you reviewed so you can recall them later if you did not yet save to a Research Folder.
3. Clear Recently Viewed on Logout: Tell AcclaimIP if you want it to forget what you viewed recently when you logout of the system. This is useful in shared environments such as our library customers.
4. Open on One Hit: If a search result contains only one result, you have the option to have the software automatically open the Document Details window for that document.
5. Image Panel: The Image Panel is to the right of the Document Details Window and contains the figures. It is in an accordion style window. Tell AcclaimIP if you want it open or closed by default. We recommend it is opened unless you are using a very small monitor.

System Tab:

1. Idle Time Before Logout: Tell AcclaimIP how long to wait before it automatically logs you out.
2. Cascade Windows: This option automatically opens new windows with a slight offset so you can see the windows behind it. Try experimenting with the option and see which you prefer.

Sometimes you may want to view patents by their images only. It is particularly useful if you have to page through 1000's of design patents looking for a particular design.

AcclaimIP has a special view mode called "Image Viewer"

It is important to monitor the patent transaction landscape, and identify companies actively acquiring or divesting from particular patents.

AcclaimIP includes a filter/facet that identifies patents that have transacted.  If the current and the original assignee do NOT match, AcclaimIP marks the patent as Transacted.  That is, they are different, and therefore likely transacted.