Technical and commercial information from patent literature

The patent literature published worldwide represents an enormous source of technical and commercial information. To extract all relevant information from the many computerized databases and paper document collections requires resources not normally found in any but the largest organizations. The Search and Advisory Service of the U.K. Patent Office was set up recently not only to make this vast store of knowledge more accessible, but also to present the results in a form to assist vital decisions to be taken objectively in industry and in commerce. Two examples are discussed in this paper of the strategies frequently invoked in order to ensure comprehensive retrieval of patent-based information, and the manner in which results may be analysed and presented to facilitate assimilation.