The growth in the amount of information available on Internet has led to the development of tools that allow us to automate the processing of large amounts of information in order to find information of interest. These tools use bibliometric and scentometric techniques that combine indexing and statistical analysis techniques. The tools perform the searches, process and analyse technical, economic and commercial information from free internet sources, as well as from on-line bibliographic and commercial databases.
The Observatory for Technology Transfer has developed an intelligent tool to adress this issue, the OBSERVA, where you can dig and progress in the analysis of a specific sector of interess and do the follow-up of a technology.
Below you will find a list of the resources available on Internet for technology watch and competitive intelligence processes:
Formal Search Sources, deep or invisible web:
- CompletePlanet – The Deep Web Directory
- Easy Searcher
- Cybermetrics – Selected deep web sites
- KwMap – Generates lists of related terms
Traditional Search Sources:
- EPO – European Patent Office.
- Espacenet – European patents, containing a section of documents from all over the world and a collection of patents dating back to 1920.
- Delphion – Collections of patents, statistical analyses and texts.
- USPTO – United States Patent and Trademark Office database.
- CIbepatnet – Bibliographic data on patents and useful models from 18 Latin American countries.
Analysis of information, generation of Topographical Maps:
- The Brain – management and visualisation of information
- MicroPatent – text mining
- Quintura Search – visual map of concepts
- Kartoo – personalizable graphic interface
- Touchgrapbh – representation using graphs
- SOMIne – self-organising maps
Prepaid Tools:
- Thomsonreuters
- Derwent Innovation Index – bibliographic references of patents from all over the world, free access to FECYT associates through the WOK portal.
- Stn-international
- Matheo-software – creates maps of relationships between companies, technologies, patent inventors, scientific publications and their authors
- SciFinder – searches in patents and scientific reviews dating back almost a century.
More information:
- Vigilancia Tecnológica e Inteligencia Competitiva. Su potencial para la empresa española. COTEC Foundation
- PUZZLE Review – Spanish-speaking Community
- Inteligencia Económica y Tecnológica: Guía para principiantes y profesionales – Madri+d
- Free on-line Technology Watch service – OPTI Foundation
- Blog: Competitive Intelligence in Argentina, Latin America, Spain and Portugal