Release Notes

August 2025: Litigation schema v2.0 released

Version 2.0 of the Litigation schema is now available. We have added the element litigation-case, which is defined in the file litigation-case-type.xsd. For details, see XML DTD and Schemas.

June 2025: Support for RHEL/Rocky 9

CLAIMS Direct now supports RHEL/Rocky 9. Instructions for new instances have been incorporated into the PostgreSQL Installation Instructions and the repository information is provided in the Software Requirements on our PostgreSQL page.

February 2025: Entities Stream adjustment

IFI CLAIMS is adjusting the Entities Stream to better identify specific entities. Currently we populate the address field when the address includes the street address, city, and state. We are changing the process to include the address when we have the city and state, but not a specific street address.

May 2024: Entities Pro API

The Entities Pro API is now available to Premium Plus subscribers as a separate data subscription. This service provides company hierarchies as well as a high-level summary of the intellectual property assets held by corporate entities. With this service, you can access metrics such as the number of patents and patent families owned, status information, and the number of citations associated with a company’s patents. See Entities Pro for more details about this service.

April 2024: Solr installations

Following a recent Solr upgrade, we have found that essentially every Solr implementation is unique. Therefore, pre-written installation instructions are likely to be misleading and we have removed them from our documentation. If you need assistance with a Solr installation, please contact your sales representative to discuss a consulting arrangement.

December 2023: DTD v2.7 released, adding attribute for Unitary Patents

We have released v2.7 of the DTD, which includes a new attribute to indicate whether Unitary Patent (UP) protection has been requested for EP-B records. The attribute, ep-up-requested, has been added to the ifi-patent-status element in the IFI Snapshot. It is marked "Yes" when the legal status code U01 has been delivered in the legal event codes. Once the UP is registered, a C0 record is created where annuity payments, appeals, and other post-grant procedures are tracked. This attribute provides an easy way to identify which applicants are seeking protection in all countries participating in the UP. We plan to begin loading the new attribute on March 23, 2024. The new DTD is available here.

April 2023: Schema tools 2.0-2 released

This minor update adds additional stream functionality to all tools. As of this release, cdws, litigation, and entities are fully supported in extracting, counting and analyzing.

April 2023: Updated Solr to version 8.11.1 

On April 1, we updated our search API and CDWI search to Solr version 8.11.1.

March 2023: Entities stream released

The Entities stream provides company hierarchies and summary statistics. It is the foundation of our IP Profiles. It is available as a separate data subscription. See the Entities Schema and User-Defined Functions, Working with the Entities Stream and Installing Additional Streams for more information.

February 2023: CLAIMS Direct Client Tools 2.6-5 released

This latest minor release of the client tools adds a diagnostics utility. This new utility will gather important information in a CLAIMS Direct instance to better aid support in diagnosing issues.

October 2022: Support for Rocky Linux 8

CLAIMS Direct now supports Rocky Linux 8. Instructions for new instances have been incorporated into the PostgreSQL Installation Instructions and the repository information is provided in the Software Requirements on our PostgreSQL page.

September 2022: New CLAIMS Direct Client Tools support transition to HTTPS

We are transitioning the Shared Services API and on-site update client communication from the HTTP protocol to HTTPS exclusively. To support this transition, the new release of perl-Alexandria-Client-Tools defaults to HTTPS for both API communications and update package downloads. On-site customers should install the new client tools by November 1, 2022.

May 2022: CLAIMS Direct CDWI 2.9.1 released

The following fixes and enhancements are included:

• A new reporting option csv.datefmt was added to the New Report screen.

• A bug wherein attachments with identical names were suppressed from grid listing output has been fixed.

• Updated Privacy and Terms of Use

May 2022: CLAIMS Direct CDWS 3.9.1 released

The following fixes and enhancements are included:

• A bug that made the endpoint /attachment/update take minutes when no @limit parameter was given has been resolved.

• system/dwh/loading endpoint is now streams aware. This resolved an issue when a @load_id parameter was from a non-xml stream, the endpoint returned HTTP 204.

• In an effort to harmonize date output formats in the Reporting API, a new csv.datefmt option is available. Please see Reporting for more details.

May 2022: CLAIMS Direct Client Tools 2.6-3 released

The latest release of the client tools adds further enhancements to streams processing. In addition, package download integrity is maintained by the addition of an MD5 checksum.

April 2021: CLAIMS Direct Client Tools 2.6-1 released

This latest release introduces streams capability. This new feature allows the seamless integration of custom XML content, non-patent data sources and custom data filtering for on-site customers. Additionally, aidxd has a new argument --tolerate which directs aidxd to tolerate all errors and retry. This brings aidxd in line with the current behavior of apgupd. Due to the change of behavior, this argument is optional but future releases may make this the default behavior. If you wish to use it, simply add it to the CD_OTHER_OPTIONS option in /etc/alexandria/aidxd.conf ( CD_OTHER_OPTIONS='--tolerate'  ) and restart the daemon via systemctl.

March 2021: Attachment service enhancements

On March 20, 2021 we are releasing the following enhancements to the Shared Services /attachment endpoint:

•  @exclude has been added as a parameter to the /attachment/fetchall endpoint. This allows you to exclude specified extensions from the package. See /attachment/fetchall for full details.

• The attachment/abimage endpoint, which allows you to fetch a front page drawing or figure, has been enhanced to handle image manipulation. See /attachment/abimage for more details.

March 2021: Litigation API released

Global litigation data from MaxVal is now available on the CLAIMS Direct platform as an optional data subscription. Case details, outcomes, party data and more are available from multiple courts. The data is provided in a similar XML style to other CLAIMS Direct content, making it easy to integrate with other patent content. See Litigation to read more about how to access this service.

March 2021: Chinese Snapshots

From March through August, approximately 30 million IFI Snapshots will be added to our Chinese full text documents. This will allow Premium Plus subscribers to access IFI’s standardized names, patent status, expiration dates, and claims summaries for Chinese records. To read more about the IFI Snapshots and how they can help you, see IFI Snapshots Explained.

February 2021: IFI Snapshots

For over 70 years, IFI CLAIMS has created value-added data which provides an overview of a patent document at a particular moment. Our patent status, expiry dates, standardized names, and claims summaries have been relied upon by professionals for decades to provide the key information necessary to evaluate patents quickly and efficiently. We have now come up with a term which we feel captures the essence of this vital information: the IFI Snapshot. To read more about what IFI Snapshots are and how they can help you, see IFI Snapshots Explained.

Earlier Release Notes

Release notes prior to 2020 can be seen in the Archived Release Notes section.