Post-webinar Q&A: Smart filters in patent review
Thank you to everyone who attended our recent webinar on Smart filters and a special thank you to Hannu Huotari, Director, Strategic IP at ASM, who joined us as a guest speaker and presented a real-life use case. We had some great discussions, and we appreciated all the insightful questions from the audience. Below is a summary of the Q&A session, now enhanced with additional details about Smart filters' functionality, reliability, and best-use scenarios.
Q: How long documents can Ask AI and Smart filters handle?
A: Ask AI can handle input documents up to 200,000 tokens, which corresponds to about 200–300 pages. Since the system analyzes one document at a time, almost all answers are based on the entire document – except in the rare cases where the document exceeds this limit.
Q: How can I view a long answer?
A: There are a few ways to see the entire answer:
- Hover over the answer to see a popup with the full response.
- Click on the answer to open the full conversation in the Ask AI drawer.
- Export to Excel, where all questions and answers for each document will be visible.
- Zoom out to make text smaller
Q: How long are filters kept active? Are they tied to specific queries?
A: A Smart filter remains available if at least one document on the current page has an answer to that question. Filters stay active within the same search case or collection but do not carry over to different cases or collections.
Q: Would reversing the order of two related questions produce the same shortlist of results?
A: In principle, yes, but in practice, there may be slight differences.
Q: IPRally used to show the number of available credits when making Ask AI questions. What happened to that?
A: We are phasing out the credits system. Whether you see credits in the UI depends on whether your company has already transitioned to the creditless Unlimited Ask AI. We aim to transition all of our customers to Unlimited Ask AI by August.
If you don’t see the amount of credits anymore, it means your company already has Unlimited Ask AI enabled, and you can askask any number of Ask AI questions.
If your usage under the new system becomes excessive to the point of impacting system performance, we may introduce soft limits. If that happens, we will notify you well in advance.
Q: Do Smart filters miss relevant results that Boolean searches can find?
A: Boolean searches match exact words or word fragments in documents. Smart filters, on the other hand, analyze the actual meaning of the document. This means:
- Boolean searches may find documents with specific words, even if they are not relevant.
- Smart filters find documents that conceptually match your question, even if they use different wording. They can also occasionally miss details or misinterpret documents.
The methods are hard to compare directly, because it depends on the exact queries and prompts.
Best practice: Use Smart filters for feature-level analysis in novelty, invalidity, and state-of-the-art searches, while using Boolean searches for keyword-based filtering.
Q: How do Smart filters handle non-English patent documents?
A: Ask AI and Smart filters only considers the English translation of documents. Similarly, IPRally’s search features are also based on English translations.
Q: Is there an advantage to using Smart filters in addition to free-text search?
A: Yes. IPRally’s AI free-text search helps narrow down millions of patents to a few hundred relevant ones. However, it is not always precise in matching exact technical details.
Smart filters go deeper, analyzing the content of those top results to refine them further – so you get e.g. from 500 documents to the top 20 most relevant ones.
Think of it this way:
- IPRally's AI search helps you find broadly relevant patents.
- Smart filters help you review them in detail by filtering based on specific technical features.
Q: Can Smart filters recognize and filter based on term definitions in disclosures?
A: Yes. Since Ask AI sees the entire patent document, including term definitions, it can filter results based on them.
Q: How long does it take to apply Smart filters to 1,000 patents?
A: Typically a few minutes, but processing time depends on how many users are running Ask AI at the same time. If you experience long wait times, let us know.
Q: How does Smart filters handle unclear questions?
A: The AI makes its best guess based on the question’s wording. You’ll get better results by using clear, well-defined Yes/No questions.
Example of a good Smart filter question:
"Does the document disclose a piezoelectric transducer suitable for pressure sensing?"
Avoid vague questions like:
"Is this patent relevant to my project?"
Q: What are the AI and Boolean scores that can be exported?
A: These are numerical scores (0–100) that indicate how closely a document matches the search query:
- AI Score for AI-based searches.
- Boolean Score for Boolean-based searches.
Q: Can multi-patent Ask AI produce a less detailed answer than single-patent Ask AI?
A: If you ask the same questions in the same order, the answers should be identical – regardless of whether you ask them one document at a time or in bulk.
Q: What does “Maybe” mean in Smart filters?
A: The Maybe option has been added to give the AI the ability to express uncertainty. It means that the AI couldn’t make a definitive Yes or No decision.
Why?
- The question might be too complex or vague.
- The patent might lack clear information.
Solution: Try asking a more specific Yes/No question to get a clearer answer.
Q: How does Smart filters handle patent family members?
A: Search results in IPRally are grouped based on basic family logic, prioritizing documents in the following order:
- US
- EPO
- PCT
- Other native English-language documents (GB, AU)
- Remaining global documents
Smart filters always analyze and provide answers based on the primary family member shown in the results list. If you want to ask questions about a different family member, you can open the family list and start a conversation about that specific document. However, this will not affect the Smart filter applied to the original search results.
Q: How reliable are Smart filter results?
A: Smart filters rely on LLMs, which are not perfect. While they provide valuable insights, always double-check the results, as:
- AI may misinterpret details or misunderstand a question.
- Shorter patents tend to have more reliable answers than longer ones (e.g., pharmaceutical patents).
The reliability goes up as new more powerful models are taken into use.
Q: Can Smart filters analyze image-based data?
A: No. Smart filters rely only on text and do not analyze images. However, they can process tables and chemical formulas if they are presented in text format rather than images.
Q: Where can I find the webinar recording?
A: You can find the on-demand webinar here.
Can I try IPRally?
Yes, we’re happy to offer you 3 days of free access to IPRally, including Smart filters. No costs, no commitments – just the opportunity to see how it can change the way you search and review.
