Looking for answers on ANSERA

Lemme ask some questions...

ANSERA (ANother Search ERA) is a semi-automatic search engine for patent information used internally by the European Patent Office in its search efforts. The purpose of (semi)automatic search is to automate as far as possible the search process and eliminate all non-value added steps for examiners at the beginning of the search workflow. The goal is to deliver highly relevant prior art documents before the examiner starts working on a patent application.

The publicly available information on ANSERA is surprisingly sparse. We know from an IT Roadmap Update and Plans submitted by the President of the EPO to the Administrative Council on 6 June 2014 that it was completed in 2014. From the same document, we learn that ANSERA enables the following types of searches:

• Figure searches using reference sign relative positions in a drawing,
• searches using concepts, where results are ranked according to the number of common concepts (or features) as well as according to their occurrences in the full text; and
• "find similar" searches, based on a selected text of a patent application. It further allows result filtering, e.g. by limiting on classes.

We know a little bit about the technology underlying ANSERA (or its remake?) from a June 2017 interview with Bastiaan, a Senior Software Engineer with Competa who is working on-site at the EPO. Bastiaan is working on a remake of ANSERA, and he has the following to say on its technology:

At the back Ansera is driven by an Elastic Search implementation and a persistency database. It also communicates with some other services for acquiring full-texts and performing translations on the fly. The only way your patent application will be granted is if no prior art exists for claims stated in the patent application.  Ansera enables the user to create concepts using a custom query language. A concept can range from anything like a simple term to a complex equation.
After the user defines the concepts, these concepts are used in various search types. One of the search types is called Figure Search. With this search one can visually place concepts on a figure and the figures collection will be queried for figures containing these concepts. The relative distance between these concepts is important for yielding better search results. The way it’s set up is very sophisticated.

Merpel being a curious cat, on 22 October 2017 she posed a number of questions to the EPO through the official query form on the EPO’s website:

1. What are the key capabilities of ANSERA? How do they differ from other patent search software? 
2. What technologies drive ANSERA? 
3. Are there additional features planned for ANSERA?  
4. What are the next steps in (semi) automatic search at the EPO? 
5. Are there any plans to make ANSERA available to the public/users? If so, when and under what conditions? (free, pay, login) 
6. How satisfied is the EPO with the results generated by ANSERA? Are there any areas where improvement is required, and if so, where?
7. Is it correct that new examiners are only trained in search using ANSERA?

The enquiry received the number 542532. Merpel was promised her questions would be forwarded to the “department in charge”. Not having heard from the “department in charge” (or anybody else at the EPO), Merpel sent a follow-up enquiry on 1 November 2017 (Enquiry no. 544546). Merpel was informed that “[a] reminder has now been sent to the department dealing with your enquiry”.

It now being the 13 November 2017 - more than three weeks after the initial enquiry - and not having heard from the EPO, Merpel puts the above questions to the readership of IPKat. She is particularly interested in hearing about your experiences using ANSERA if you are an examiner with the EPO.

Please do comment, but keep the Comment Moderation Policy in mind – use a pseudonym, and be civil. If you prefer to send an email, Merpel can be reached at merpel.ipkat@gmail.com.