Patent information encourages innovation among SMEs, businesses, academic institutions, and research groups. Therefore, it is essential for R&D departments, especially for the development of new technology to receive funding and research. Minesoft specialises in tools and services for retrieving, analysing, and distributing patent information throughout the enterprise.
Ann Chapman-Daniel is a co-founder of Minesoft, she mainly concentrates on business administration, initiates marketing and people relations as well as the financial side, and manages teams by bringing up the correct skill sets. Meanwhile, Ophir Daniel directs innovation through product design, development, and IT infrastructure. They are both supported by an exceptional staff in London, Germany, and the United States.
According to Ann, it is the role of a leader to motivate others to fulfil their potential, as a company requires a variety of assets for prolonged success. “What surprised and interested me initially was that once up and running, our business took on a life of its own, and almost like the feeling you get as a parent, us “managers” needed to be able to step back and not stifle or over-own it, while still driving it forward. Not to forget the requirement of continual adaptation to changing technology and markets while enjoying the ride!” exhorts Ann.
The Inception Story
The business was founded in 1996 to develop databases and software solutions for the IP sector. While Ophir was a sought-after web-based developer working in the early internet period, Ann’s career was thriving in the online publishing industry. She managed and directed businesses in the fields of published patents, science and technology, and commercial information. They collaborated closely with Questel-Orbit and other companies for almost five years in marketing, sales, and product development before branching out with their own products in the early 2000s.
In 2003, they began collaborating closely with RWS PLC, a publicly held UK specialty translation company and one of the biggest corporate translation groups in existence today. By fusing RWS’s proficiency in language support services with Minesoft’s unique technological solutions, they built a searchable patent database that now has over 150 million patent documents in it and is now relied on by around 80,000 users around the world.
All in One Place
Minesoft primarily collaborates with intellectual property law firms, patent attorneys, IP & Legal teams and experienced patent specialists across the globe in almost all industrial sectors.
To conduct a thorough freedom-to-operate or search in the patent area, which is a requirement for submitting any patent application at any State Patent Office, one must first sort through the enormous amount of data in PatBase. Since Minesoft deals with companies filing in the fields of chemicals, pharmaceuticals, engineering and electronics, it needs solutions that allow searching across millions of patent documents, narrowing them down to a manageable number to be viewed in detail.
To efficiently review patent documents that often have tens or even hundreds of pages, the company developed systems and solutions designed to gear up the review process, making it easier for users to sift through this mountain of data. Original filed copies, as well as the document’s searchable full-text, must be available. The patent family (a group of patent filings related to one invention) is critical in the equation of patent searching. Any one of these areas is complex and requires a special suite of tools. PatBase has them available in one place, which is why it has become the “go-to” place for search and examination of patents for many IP professionals.
Leading the Industry
Over the past two decades, there has been a growing demand for precise and usable knowledge derived from high-quality patent information from a wide range of user groups and use cases. Over 20 years of innovation and development have gone into the history of the company. Unlike most of its rivals, who have other areas of interest and activity that divert their focus from the professional patent searching niche, Minesoft is solidly established in the specialised sector of professional patent searching today. Since they do not have to include it in a much larger business strategy, it focuses more on the sector’s needs.
Change in Compliance with Customer Needs
Customers’ needs are taken into consideration while designing a product. “We are very fortunate and thankful for having customers who consider us their partners and routinely provide constructive feedback, which is in all parties’ best interests,” says Ann. Customers who use Minesoft products on a daily basis are experts in the patent information sector, so who better to make judgements about future development. As a dynamic company and as a result of their in-house development team, they are often making even small tweaks to products based on customer feedback—sometimes even on the same day.
Minesoft has introduced a new product, PatDocs, in response to a demand it identified with some of their customers and the market at large. PatDocs is a streamlined system for patent attorneys that lets IP paralegal teams and other IP professionals support key activities in prosecution. This new offering allows Minesoft to offer solutions to more professionals across the entire IP lifecycle, including R&D, legal, and commercialization.
Impact Due to Change
Minesoft has an exceptionally low turnover rate in the industry, which helps in building proper client relationships and gaining insights of product and market.
Ann described how company staff and culture depend on two factors that keep them ahead of the competition:
Customer First
This is demonstrated by the fact that they have the highest retention rates in the IP industry and that customer feedback mainly tends to influence product development.
The people
Their pride and delight are having low turnover and attrition, and they believe that these two characteristics enable them to effectively tackle all other challenges.
Steps Towards Environment
Businesses must make a good impact on their surroundings. Minesoft is happy to make as much of a contribution as it can to the work being done for local communities, the arts, and the environment. Ann and her colleagues have already sponsored a nearby theatre and taken part in a paddle boarding competition to draw attention to the Thames River’s plastic pollution. They will sponsor an award at the Richmond Chamber of Commerce Business Awards night later in the year, which is a fantastic chance to promote flourishing neighbourhood businesses.
Minesoft, a global provider of patent solutions, views the global reach of customer-centric solutions as crucial as their effects on local communities, which is why it collaborated with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on the ASPI program. PatBase, a sophisticated tool, and service, can be accessed by researchers in developing countries for free or at a reduced cost.
Future of Minesoft
In 2022, Minesoft closed on a substantial growth investment from MLM 2, an information services and software platform, and Warburg Pincus, a leading global growth investor. This significant growth investment is already accelerating the development of new products and enhance existing products with analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.
Ann explained that AI is a big buzzword in the online publishing industry now, and Minesoft is developing new techniques to automate and streamline its products. As millions of patent documents are being published every year, especially by countries like the US and China, this wealth of research material needs to be accessed efficiently by innovators around the world. AI could well be the solution. Since its founding in 1996, Minesoft has consistently prioritised innovation, utilising cutting-edge technology to provide useful and effective products for the patent information community. The business’s R&D activities include keeping up with the rapid expansion of the computer industry and data delivery technologies, particularly the Internet.
This year, Minesoft will continue its legacy of innovation with the introduction of the most powerful AI search tool currently available to the IP industry, Minesoft Origin. To execute AI-based semantic rapid searches and outsource great understanding of patents, a novel training approach and model architecture are used. Unique tokenization is employed to deal with the shifting vocabulary of patent-like content. Ann & Ophir chose an ideal moment in “technology time” to set up Minesoft, looking back on where they started and where they are now. With the recent growth investment from MLM 2 and Warburg Pincus, the company has the resources to expand and develop the product suite. “We foresee a great future,” says Ann.
Written by Steve Sanchez.
