Conducting due diligence, business intelligence, competitive intelligence or just trying to identify a company logo through reverse image searching? The WIPO IP Portal might be able to help you out with those tasks.
One of my favorite sites when it comes to researching companies is the WIPO IP Portal. WIPO stands for World Intellectual Patent Organization and is an UN agency specialized on protecting intellectual property (IP) worldwide. Their Patentscope database allows you to search for patents, and they also incorporate (trade-)mark and design databases in this portal. Sometimes looking through this data will provide additional information on company affiliations or indications on upcoming products.
Let me give you a brief theoretical example. Your client has asked you to perform a pre-employment screening on the potential new head of research and development. Her CV does not show anything unusual, no past links to current competitors are noted here and the interview went quite well. When asked about any links to the competition, she denied having any. Using the WIPO database, an old patent is found in which she is mentioned as co-inventor together with a man that went on and founded a rival company in which he is still acting CEO. Whether or not any ties between the two still exist, is definitely something that should be discussed. This is just one example of how the WIPO portal can be used. Other areas are due diligence checks, business intelligence or competitive intelligence and even reverse image searching company logos.
Searching within the patent database Patentscope is quite simple. Once on the main page patentscope.wipo.int, you can query your search term worldwide. This could be the name of an individual, a company name or a specific product or keyword. The search allows Boolean operators such as “AND”, “OR” and quotation marks, just like you would use them in Google. Furthermore, the drop-down menu on the left allows you to choose the field in which your query is to be performed.
I decided to see which patents contain “OSINT”. As a result, OSINT is found in 77 entries. The list of results can sorted in various ways and foreign language content can be translated automatically (I’ll show that later).
Browsing through the results, I found a patent that looked quite interesting. A company named VERINT Systems Ltd. filed a patent to use social network analysis for target profiling. Maybe I can learn something from this patent. Clicking on the patent number will lead to the details of this filing.
We can see that this patent was applied for in Israel on 31.10.2011 (Application Date). By clicking on the tabs below the headline, you can access the description of the patent, the claims (what can this do?), any drawings that were filed with it and in some cases the original documents can be downloaded. VERINT Systems Ltd. is an American company founded by a former Israeli intelligence officer. Most of VERINT’s staff is working in Israel. That’s likely why this patent was registered in Israel. Had I not known that VERINT had Israeli roots, this patent could have been a starting point for further research into why the company registered it in Israel first. Another reason, next to the fact that most of their personnel is stationed there, could be that Israel is a primary target market.
Next up, I looked up “VERINT Systems Ltd” to see all the patents the company had registered. Among these was also the one previously mentioned, which had now been filed in the US as well. Such patents will include additional data regarding the preceding or original patent they are based on. The data field “Priority Data” on the bottom left is hyperlinked to the Israeli patent shown above. Furthermore, this patent also includes the name of the inventor, which we could also query.
As I mentioned before, the database will translate content in foreign languages automatically and allows you to choose which translation service you would like to use. This VERINT patent was filed in South Korea. By clicking on “Machine Translation” on top right, we can have this content translated. I picked Google translate in this case.
As you can see, using Patentscope could help you find out more about a company’s past and future activities, help you find people linked to the company and provide leads regarding their main area of operations. This database is basically a meta search engine, so always make sure to check to national patent registries too, as these might have current data that hasn’t been ingested into Patentscope yet. Researching patents is not all that can be done on this site. As mentioned in the first paragraph, (trade-)marks and designs can also be queried. For this, you have to click on the menu button in the top left corner and then navigate to “MARKS” or “DESIGNS”. Under “MARKS” use the “Global Brand Database”, under “DESIGNS” go to “Global Designs Database”.
The search for trademarks is quite easy. In the left tab (SEARCH BY), you can add filters to your query. I decided to search for an organization named UNITER that is (was) located in Germany. Underneath the SEARCH BY box, you’ll see the current query you have built. This system allows you to build very complex queries.
However, my favorite part is the integrated reverse image search. This can be found in the right tab (FILTER BY) under images.
You can upload an image here and adjust your search using “Pick a strategy” and “Pick an image type”. Hovering your mouse over the options will give you a brief description of what they do. I’ve uploaded an image and picked the “concept” strategy, as well as “nonverbal” image type (which means there is no text in my image).
I downloaded this image from the UNITER Facebook page. The first result is a perfect match. The image was registered by an organization in Switzerland. Those of you who know more about UNITER will understand why.
To sum it up, the WIPO database offers a lot of useful features for OSINTers, providing leads on individuals, companies, technologies and even a very powerful reverse image search for logos. I’m gonna go back to all the patents regarding OSINT, WEBINT and intelligence in general and start combing through them. Another case of OSINT on OSINT…
MW-OSINT / 03.05.2020
Key Findings 