1. Pre-classification and AI
French Patent Department

2. Current procedure
Currently: Manual sorting by managers Expectation: Reducing sorting time and limiting distribution errors DB
Sorting 1 S1 S2 S3
Sorting 2 P1 P2 P3
- Examiner 1
- Examiner 2
- Examiner 3
- …
Automatisation of sorting on levels 1 et 2 by using only classification (subclass level)
Managers keep the last sorting task (examiner level) : based on IPC, but also on workload, agendas …
21/01/2019
/ Pre-classification and AI

3. 2 possibilities Patent application Computer-Assisted Classification
Pre-classification tool
3 or more potential classes
(with level of confidence)
Most likely examiners’ team
Decision support for managers, who will continue to distribute
Automatic distribution to this examiners’ team
21/01/2019
/ Pre-classification and AI

4. Methodology Learning : INPI databases (2008-2018) 140 000 applications
Patent application -
Main IPC
Data collection
IPC Team
Patent application
(xml)
with associated team
Data fusion
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/ Pre-classification and AI

5. Methodology Text processing Model construction
Text Mining : lowercase, punctuation removal, stopwords removal, lemmatisation, stemming,…
Model construction
Machine learning model: FastText
In the future, maybe TF-IDF and neural networks
Model application on the training set (ca applications)
Comparison with the correct team
Graphic interface R-Shiny to apply the model on new applications
Export of the predicted team
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/ Pre-classification and AI

6. Results Reliability: 85 % of the training set P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 P7 P8
Error rate with manual distribution : 5 to 10 %
Error distribution with Computer-Assisted pre-classification
Reference P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 P7 P8
1385 51 61 20 49 35 6 36
1503 84 15 39
140 26 56
2160 50 12 21 38
2219
106 24 47 42 66
136
1326 34 14
104 29 25
1589 45 7 9 23 10
1908 76 33 46 43 54 59
1398
Prediction
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/ Pre-classification and AI

7. Recent developpments (6 months) Focusing points Impact analysis
Testing phase
Recent developpments (6 months)
Focusing points
Impact analysis
Processing delays in case of error
Reattribution mechanism
Stabilisation and implementation of the model
IPC Proposal for examiners
21/01/2019
/ Pre-classification and AI