I am particularly seeking input from patent attorneys, examiners, lawyers, and other professionals who regularly engage with patent claims in mechanical, electrical, electronic and related fields. Whether you are formally qualified and registered, or have developed relevant expertise through other roles (such as patent examination or in-house IP management), your experience in evaluating patent claims would be invaluable to my research. While experience with claims drafted according to common US practice would be especially useful – since my source data is drawn primarily from US patents – expertise in any major English-language jurisdiction would be welcome.
The task itself is straightforward and web-based – I am asking participants to compare pairs of patent claims and evaluate their relative scope, using an online application that I have designed and implemented over the past few months. No special knowledge is required beyond the ability to read and understand patent claims in technical fields with which you are familiar. You might even find it to be fun!
If interested, please read the remainder of this article, which comprises the call for participation in the research project, as approved by the University of Melbourne Human Ethics Committee. It also includes links to the web site where you can read more about the project and register to participate.
Invitation to Participate in Patent Claim Scope Research Project
Are you an experienced patent professional with expertise in evaluating patent claims? Researchers at the University of Melbourne Law School are seeking volunteers for a groundbreaking research project aimed at developing AI models to assess patent claim scope.
Project Overview
This research is being conducted by Dr Mark Summerfield as part of his PhD studies at the Melbourne Law School, under the supervision of Professor Andrew Christie (Melbourne Law School) and Professor Tim Baldwin (Computing and Information Systems). The project investigates how the scope of granted patents has changed over time and how it compares between different jurisdictions. This research will contribute to our understanding of patent system performance and the impact of different legal and regulatory regimes on granted patent scope.
Who Can Participate?
We're looking for experienced patent practitioners and other professionals with:
- experience in reading, comprehending, and evaluating patent claims in mechanical, electrical, electronic, and related fields; and
- familiarity with claim drafting practices in major English-language jurisdictions.
Formal qualification and/or registration as a patent practitioner in Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada, UK, or Europe is preferred. However, people who have acquired the above essential skills and experience in other roles (e.g. as IP managers or inventors) are welcome to participate.
What's Involved?
Participation is entirely web-based and involves:
- registering on our secure website (https://claimscopeproject.net);
- completing a brief profile about your expertise; and
- using our online application to evaluate pairs of patent claims for relative scope.
You may contribute as many, or as few, evaluations as you wish, at your convenience.
Your evaluations will help build a novel dataset for training and validating AI models capable of comparing and ranking patent claim scope.
Benefits of Participating
By contributing your expertise, you'll be:
- advancing research on patent system performance;
- supporting the development of innovative AI tools for patent analysis; and
- contributing to a dataset that will be made available to the wider research community.
Time Commitment and Flexibility
A minimum time commitment of 1-2 hours would be appreciated, to ensure that we are able to gather a sufficiently large number of expert evaluations for our training dataset. Other than that, however, you can contribute as much or as little as you like during the data collection period. The web-based nature of the project allows you to participate at times that suit you.
Data Privacy and Security
Your personal information will be kept confidential and secure. The final published dataset will comprise only claim scope evaluation data, and will not contain any identifying information of participants.
How to Get Involved
To learn more about the project or to register as a participant, please visit https://claimscopeproject.net
For any questions, contact Dr Mark Summerfield at m.summerfield@student.unimelb.edu.au.
This research has been approved by the University of Melbourne Human Research Ethics Committee (ID: 30794).
Join us in shaping the future of patent analysis and contribute to this important research project today!
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