Evolution of client-focused search reports: Exemplified compound tabular display linked to citing publications

Abstract

Exemplified compounds resulting from a substructure search are key to making filings based on novelty and inventive step [1]. Conversations with our attorney clients revealed that they prefer to see a table of structures with hyperlinks to references, rather than a list of references with the structures beneath them. To provide this structure-led display we have had to rely on internal macros written many years ago to reorganise the output from commercial chemical information databases, but the macros are not supported by our internal IT and often crash with large volumes of data. Analytical table tools in third party software have not been able to provide a solution either.For several years we have used a commercially available reporting software 2 to deliver reports, but it did not have the capability to include hit structures and was reference rather than structure oriented. We describe a collaboration with the software providers to develop a method enabling us to present our structures in an easy to read tabular format hyperlinked to their references. These tables are now used in our search reports for our chemistry attorneys, giving a succinct view of the compounds exemplified within a publication (patent and literature) to help facilitate decision making.