We have started using the Thomson Innovation recently at work, and I must confess that I was hooked the first time I started working on in. The data coverage is good. A lot of nifty features, like combining Derwent with normal queries.
However, now that I have used it for a while, I must say that I have a few suggestions on how it can be improved. Thomson folks, are you listening??
- Fire your helpdesk. I have sent them two emails with queries in two days and they have not responded yet. That sucks and is simply unacceptable. And these were very standard and basic queries. You need better people on it. Emulate the STN helpdesk. They rock!!
- Too many rouch edges. E.g., data download – bad output for bigger sets and standard fields missing (Inpadoc family??).
- Your system is tooooo damn slow!! It practically stops working at times. Use some help from professional people in designing your webpages to decrease page download. Reuse a lot of downloaded parts of the page.
- Your Derwent is broke at many places. Fix it ASAP. Partial manual codes. Are you kiding me?? Use Derwent data from Delphion.
From my experience, MicroPatent remains the most user friendly database for regular IP work. And Delphion most trustworthy, though it is not user friendly.
I believe that there would not be too many people using patent databases at any given point, and therefore producing a good, stable, fast and efficient database should not be a problem and should not require too much effort.
Just wish these people listened!! Sigh.
Update: Thomson just released the next version today (Dec 15). Don’t know if they took care of some of the issues I mentioned above though. Will test and post back.
PS: Please note that these is a personal opinion only and is not meant to criticize a product or company.
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