D

Derwent Patent Search

The models are the engine of core capabilities layered on a product that would function without them, which is the B band. There is more AI here than the seed's single line suggests, and it is worth listing because the record's other rows depend on it: AI Search, a language transformer model trained on DWPI, launched December 2024 across more than 160 million patent records; AI data enrichment filling missing bibliographic fields such as assignee; Optimized Assignee with Ultimate Parent resolving current ownership; and AI-derived legal status prediction supplying estimated expiration date, remaining life and dead-or-alive status.

What keeps this at B is that the platform underneath is a curated database and a classical search engine, and the vendor sells it that way. AI Search is presented as one search mode among several, alongside keyword and Boolean searching across more than 300 fields, classification browsing, the citation index and Themescape mapping. Remove every model and a buyer still has DWPI's editorially written invention summaries, family building, full text from 76 jurisdictions and litigation data from 140-plus.

The human layer is the product's own headline claim, being over 800 patent editors rewriting disclosures into standard English, and the AI is trained on their output rather than substituting for it. Verified 13 September 2026.

Grounding is real and documented with a described retrieval method, short of any measured accuracy, which is the B band. R15 governs the shape of this row and the note says so, because the usual limbs bite differently: the product retrieves patent records from a closed curated index rather than generating propositions about the law, so a returned result is a real document with an identifier by construction and the fabrication risk this axis was written for does not arise in the same form.

The retrieval method is described rather than asserted. AI Search is stated to use a language transformer model trained on DWPI, to work from free-text input such as an invention disclosure, and to be the only AI patent search trained and powered by that index, with the vendor explaining why that matters: the model learns from editorially written summaries of novelty, use and advantage rather than from raw patent prose.

What is absent is measurement. No recall or precision figure is published for AI Search, no test set is described, no benchmark against keyword or Boolean searching is offered, and nothing states what the model misses. On a tool sold for first-pass patentability and freedom-to-operate work, recall is the metric that matters and none is given. Recorded and expressly not credited as measurement: a named customer's statement that relevant records now appear at the top of the list rather than after reviewing 50 to 200 results is a testimonial, graded on operational evidence. Verified 13 September 2026.

A mode structure is published and nothing else about oversight is, which lands in the C band. What exists is real but thin. The user chooses between search modes, AI Search sitting alongside keyword, Boolean and advanced modes and classification browsing, so a customer can decide per search whether a model is involved at all, and the vendor describes AI Search as helping to validate results and ensure relevant records are not missed, which positions it as a complement to conventional searching rather than a replacement.

That is a published distinction between how the product can be run, and it is the only oversight material located. Everything the higher bands ask for is absent. No statement describes what a searcher should do with AI Search results before relying on them, no confidence signal or ranking explanation is published, nothing describes how the model behaves when a query falls outside its training, and nothing addresses what happens when a search misses relevant art. R15 is applied and named: a search engine returning ranked records does not act unattended, so the limb asking at what threshold the system acts alone does not bite and is recorded as inapplicable rather than failed.

But the limbs that do bite on a retrieval tool, being what the user is told about the reliability of a ranking and how to check it, are unaddressed, and the stakes are real because a missed prior art reference is the failure mode a patentability opinion turns on. Verified 13 September 2026.

Real deployment evidence with substance, short of the dating and method the A band requires, which is the B band. Two kinds of evidence sit here and both are first-party. Institutional adoption is stated as a figure: the platform and its DWPI data are used by 40 global patent and trademark offices, which for a prior art tool is the strongest form of validation available, since those are the bodies that examine patentability for a living.

And a named individual at a named organisation gives an attributed before-and-after in the launch release: Susan Johnson, patent agent and IP researcher at Boston Scientific, describing other tools as requiring review of up to 50 or even 200 results to find the most relevant records, against AI Search placing the most relevant at the top. That is a named customer, an identified role and a concrete comparison in one artifact, which is more than most records in this lane manage.

Three things hold it off A. Neither claim is dated as a deployment. No method accompanies the comparison, so the 50-to-200 figure describes the witness's experience of other products rather than a measurement of this one. And the 40 patent offices are counted rather than named, so a reader cannot verify which. The customer stories and case study material on the wider Clarivate estate were not reached, the site returning a bot-detection block, and are what would move this row. Verified 13 September 2026.

Confidentiality is asserted in general corporate terms and the question this product actually raises is unaddressed, which is the C band. What is published sits at company level: a privacy policy describing Clarivate as processor for customer-entered data with separate data processing agreements concluded with the controller, personnel bound by confidentiality terms, and service providers contractually held to the same standard.

The published Clarivate Terms treat each party's confidential information as protected and define Clarivate IP as including confidential information and trade secrets. None of that addresses the specific exposure. AI Search works from free-text input, and the input the vendor invites is an invention disclosure, which is unpublished, novelty-destroying if it escapes, and often privileged in the hands of a patent attorney.

Nothing published states whether a search query is stored, for how long, whether it is logged against a user or an organisation, whether it is used to improve the model, or whether it is visible to Clarivate personnel. For a tool whose whole purpose is to be given an unfiled invention before anyone else sees it, that is the central confidentiality question and it is not answered anywhere located. Privilege and work product are not addressed.

No model provider position exists because no provider is named. Retention and deletion are unstated. Recorded as a retrieval limit rather than an absence: the confidentiality section of the current Clarivate Terms was not recovered through the R8 ladder. Verified 13 September 2026.

A boilerplate disclaimer sits in the terms while the marketing describes the product in decision terms, which is the C band. The disclaimer is real and is contractual: the Clarivate Terms disclaim all warranties other than those expressly stated, naming accuracy, completeness and currentness among the excluded ones, which on a prior art database is a pointed exclusion because those three properties are exactly what a searcher relies on.

Against that, the product is marketed in the language of professional determinations rather than of information retrieval: enabling IP professionals to make reliable innovation decisions, supporting accurate first-pass patentability searches, informing freedom-to-operate opinions, and helping users assess patentability with speed and confidence. Freedom-to-operate opinions and patentability assessments are legal work product, and the marketing places the tool inside them.

The audience is not ambiguous, which is what keeps this off the floor: the vendor names patent researchers, patent attorneys and other IP and R&D professionals, so it is explicit that non-lawyers are intended users too. What the higher bands require is absent. Nothing published addresses where the tool's output stops and professional judgement begins, no supervision or competence dimension is offered, no statement addresses an R&D user relying on an AI Search result without counsel, and no jurisdiction or professional rule is named. Verified 13 September 2026.

Governance is described as a structure under construction, with no mechanism, owner or testing disclosed, which is the C band. What exists is a corporate-level statement rather than a product one: Clarivate reports multi-functional committees collaborating on a comprehensive AI Governance Framework, with those committees guiding segment leaders as generative AI is woven into product offerings. That is more than nothing, because it identifies a governance structure and locates responsibility with named committees rather than with no one, but it describes a framework being built rather than one that governs.

Nothing else was located. No AI principles or responsible-AI page exists on the product estate, no individual or function is named as accountable for model behaviour, no pre-release testing regime is described, and no evaluation result is disclosed. Bias is not addressed in any form. That omission is worth naming precisely on this product rather than generically: AI Search is trained on DWPI, a corpus written by human editors, so any systematic tendency in that editorial output, whether toward particular technology areas, jurisdictions or drafting conventions, would propagate into what the model retrieves.

The vendor markets the DWPI-trained provenance as the product's central advantage and publishes nothing about testing whether the model inherits the index's blind spots as well as its strengths. R16 is noted: nothing connects the corporate framework to this product in scope terms. Verified 13 September 2026.

A corporate security programme is published without addressing what happens to what a user puts into the product, which is the C band. The programme is real. Clarivate publishes an Information Security Program page stating that the ISO 27000 family, and ISO/IEC 27001 specifically, forms the basis of its information security management system, with documented policies, standards and controls conforming to that standard and an in-house team covering cloud, application and information security.

A Trust Center brings together information security, privacy and security compliance material, and a defined incident response process is stated: identify, investigate, contain, and take corrective action based on severity and impact. Staff are subject to a code of conduct. What is not published is anything product-specific about data handling. No retention period for search queries, no deletion commitment, no statement of whether AI Search inputs are logged or reused, no subprocessor list, and no description of access controls within the product.

The gap matters here because the input is an invention disclosure. Two things are recorded and expressly not credited under R16 and ground rules section 3: the detailed certification and penetration-testing material published under the Clarivate umbrella belongs to Ex Libris, a different business unit serving libraries and academia, and nothing connects it to this product; and the Trust Center states plainly that specific certifications and reports may vary by product and environment. Verified 13 September 2026.

A real published position on liability, short of the full picture, which is the B band. The Clarivate Terms are published and address the commercial limbs directly. Warranties exist rather than being wholly disclaimed: stated warranties plus any product-specific warranties included in the order are identified as the exclusive warranties, with everything else excluded, and remedies are specified rather than left open.

For software, if a valid warranty claim cannot be rectified within a reasonable period the customer may cancel the licence by written notice and receive a refund calculated on five-year straight-line depreciation from the order's effective date; for professional services, Clarivate will rectify on written notice. Liability is capped and the cap is drawn precisely: aggregate liability of each party, and of Clarivate's third-party providers, for all claims including breach of statutory duty, tort and negligence, is limited to actual direct damages up to the amounts payable in the twelve months before the first incident, measured against the specific Product that is the subject of the claim.

Excluded losses are mutual, covering lost profits, business, revenue, anticipated savings, data and goodwill, and indirect or consequential loss. What is absent keeps it off A. The disclaimer expressly excludes warranties of accuracy, completeness and currentness, which are the properties a prior art search rests on; no AI-specific provision was located; no vendor indemnity was located; and no insurance position is published. Verified 13 September 2026.

Integration is claimed and the mechanism is named without a documented catalogue or configuration detail, which is the C band. What is established comes mostly from the agreement rather than from a product surface, which is itself telling. The Clarivate Terms contemplate that Licensed Information may be made available by API or data feed, subject to information service terms, and that APIs may be offered to configure hosted and installed software or to allow it to interoperate with third-party programs, described as Client Configurations, with API and data feed keys not to be shared, used across multiple interfaces, or used to mimic Clarivate functionality.

So an API exists and its commercial boundaries are published. Within the product, integration is largely internal: DWPI and the citation index are integrated with patent full text from multiple authorities including machine translations for China, Korea and Japan, and litigation data is correlated in from Darts-ip. What the higher bands require was not established. No connector catalogue or developer documentation was reached, no direction of flow is described for any connection, and not one external system is named as supported, which is a real gap given that the buyer typically also runs an IP management or docketing system and Clarivate itself sells adjacent IP products.

The estate returned a bot-detection block and the integration surfaces were not recovered through the R8 ladder. Verified 13 September 2026.

Cloud delivery is evident and neither the tenancy model nor the region is stated, which under R38 is the C band, both co-equal limbs being absent. The product is a hosted browser-based research application, described by the vendor as a proprietary patent research application accessed through the Clarivate platform and licensed by subscription, with the Clarivate Terms distinguishing hosted software from installed software and contemplating both.

So the delivery model is clear enough. Everything a buyer with constraints would ask is not. No data centre region is named for this product, no country of processing is stated, no regional election is offered, and nothing describes whether a customer's saved searches, alerts and work files sit in a shared or isolated environment. No single-tenant, private or on-premises option is offered or refused. Recorded and expressly not credited under R16 and ground rules section 3: Clarivate publishes detailed data centre and residency material covering the United States, Europe and Asia Pacific, but it belongs to Ex Libris, a separate business unit serving libraries and academia, and no scope statement connects it to Derwent.

The Trust Center itself makes the point, stating that specific certifications and reports may vary by product and environment and directing buyers to an account representative for product-specific documentation. Verified 13 September 2026.

Certification is real and stated, short of accessible evidence and short of any scope covering this product, which is the B band. A named standard is claimed at company level and claimed properly: Clarivate states it has adopted the ISO 27000 family, and ISO/IEC 27001 specifically, as the basis of its information security management system, with policies, standards and controls documented and implemented to conform to it, and its trust material states that the security programme aligns with ISO 27001 and SOC 2, standards it describes as requiring documented controls, independent audits and continuous improvement.

A Trust Center exists and is public, gathering information security, privacy and security compliance in one place. Two things prevent A, and the vendor states the first itself. Scope is not published per product: the Trust Center says specific certifications and reports may vary by product and environment and directs buyers to contact an account representative for product-specific security documentation, so a buyer cannot establish from public material whether Derwent Patent Search sits inside any certification boundary.

And no report, certificate, audit period or auditor is obtainable without that conversation, which under R5 is the sales-gated tier. Recorded and not credited under R16: the specific certifications set out in detail on the Clarivate estate, covering ISO 22301, 27001, 27017, 27018, 27032 and 27701, are Ex Libris's and no connector reaches this product. Verified 13 September 2026.

The architecture is described without the providers, which the B band names expressly as one of its two shapes. What is disclosed is more than most records manage on the training side and nothing at all on the supply side. The architecture is stated: AI Search uses a language transformer model, described elsewhere on the estate as a large-language AI model. The training corpus is named precisely and is the point of the product: the model is trained and powered by DWPI, the vendor's own editorially curated index, and the vendor markets it as the only AI patent search trained on that data, explaining that this is what lets it recognise related concepts across patent publications.

Being able to name what a model was trained on, and for that corpus to be a proprietary asset the vendor controls, is a genuinely strong disclosure and is rare in this corpus. What is missing is everything downstream of that. No model is named, no version or family is given, no provider is identified, nothing states whether the model was built in-house or licensed and fine-tuned, nothing says where inference runs, and no commitment exists to notify customers if any of it changes.

The same silence covers the other AI capabilities: data enrichment, Optimized Assignee and legal status prediction are each described as AI-derived with nothing said about what performs them. Under ground rules section 3 the DWPI training disclosure is spent here on architecture and is separately the substance of the corpus provenance row. Verified 13 September 2026.

No pricing information is published at any level, including the unit of charge, which is the D band. The page inventory was taken under R20 from the product estate recovered through the R8 ladder and from the site's own navigation: product pages for patent search and adjacent Derwent offerings, a landing page for the current release, the legal centre, the trust centre and the newsroom. There is no pricing page. The only commercial route on the product page is a free trial request form, and the wider estate resolves to contact and demonstration requests.

Nothing published states the charging model, so a buyer cannot establish even the shape of it: not whether the subscription is priced per named user, per concurrent seat, per module, by search volume or by corpus coverage, and not what the AI Search capability costs relative to the base platform or whether it is included. The Clarivate Terms confirm that fees sit in an order form or ordering document rather than anywhere public, and add a term worth naming because it bears on what a buyer can compare: the agreement treats pricing and discounts as confidential information the customer must not disclose.

Under R10's closing discipline no structure means no row, so no VendorPricing row is written. Recorded and not credited under R41: a third-party listing states that no pricing is published and that buyers must contact the vendor, which corroborates rather than establishes the absence. Verified 13 September 2026.

Coverage is described with real substance and quantified precisely, with the boundaries left open, which is the B band. Jurisdictional coverage is stated with more precision than anywhere else in this lane, and each figure is separately scoped rather than rolled into one claim: DWPI curation across 60 jurisdictions and 132 million patents, enhanced full text from 76 jurisdictions, bibliographic data from 109, more than 178 million patent publications, and correlated litigation case data from more than 140 jurisdictions.

Language coverage is addressed through machine translation and full-text integration for major authorities including China, Korea and Japan, with the interface available in Chinese, English, Japanese and Korean. Buyer coverage is named rather than implied, the vendor identifying patent researchers, patent attorneys and other IP and R&D professionals, and evidencing the institutional end with 40 global patent and trademark offices.

Use cases are enumerated: patentability, freedom to operate, invalidity, prosecution, portfolio monitoring, licensing and monetisation, and litigation support. What is left open is the limit in every direction. No technology area is named as better or worse covered, and the 41 new DWPI manual codes added for emerging areas imply the taxonomy lags new fields without saying by how much. No customer size floor is stated, and nothing distinguishes what this product covers from the adjacent Derwent Patent Monitor. Verified 13 September 2026.