How Unilever use IPRally to empower their patent attorneys and strengthen their analysis team
Allowing for more value-added work
As one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies, Unilever needs to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to adopting new technologies, and patent intelligence tools are no exception. After evaluating several AI solutions on the market, Unilever decided to deploy IPRally within its Patent Information Analyst team under a pilot licence.
Impressed with the simplicity of IPRally, the decision was made to extend the pilot to also use it as a quick reference tool for Unilever’s Patent Attorneys.
“Our Patent Information Analysts pride themselves on their high standard when it comes to the quality of patent searching. Even though the tool already worked well with mechanical searches, having gained experience with IPRally for a year, our Analysts were positive about its potential, and it was decided to support IPRally with its development in chemical searches, which require a distinctly different approach to the AI strategy and search setup.
To unlock its full promise as an effective AI tool for chemical searches, we knew that the training of IPRally’s AI with wider chemical subject matter was essential. As such, IPRally and Unilever partnered together to enable Unilever patent attorneys to use AI in the field of chemical searches to train the AI system.”
Our initial objective was to improve the quality of the search requests. A quick search in IPRally, as the first step in searching, has helped Attorneys both in refining their claims and in understanding the background art better. There are numerous AI solutions available in the market for patent intelligence, however, finding the right one, that can also be deployed for chemical searches, is a challenge and more so for a team like ours with an ambition to pioneer the use of AI in this area”, says Neenu Mathai, Head of Patents- Beauty & Wellbeing and Patent Information Analysts Lead at Unilever.
Like a reference book you have next to you
By starting the search in IPRally and sharing the results between the two teams of professionals, competencies can be synergized. Attorneys can work more autonomously, and Analysts get more precise search requests to start from, according to Neenu Mathai.
“It’s like a reference book that Attorneys can have next to them. It is very easy to get search results from IPRally. The overall wait for Analysts to return a search is reduced and the quality of requests are improved. So as a group, we’re saving time. In conventional search tools, even if it’s just a quick search, you need to know which field to use, the order of the keywords and the operators. None of that’s required with IPRally"
