TABLE OF CONTENTS

• 1st possibility to regroup Assignee names: select and group
• 2nd possibility to regroup assignees : the Corporate tree
• 3rd possibility: Use a filter
• 4th possibility : Suggested grouping

Data rules are available only in a saved analysis (analysis module or inside a guided activity). 

See the article "Data Rules Administration" to learn how to activate or review existing rules.

These rules concern mainly Assignee names.
They will help you to regroup several assignee names under the same item, and thus avoid a scattering of different portfolios under several names.

You can also regroup Inventors, Concepts (Advanced and Premium), Classifications, Representatives, Parent companies (Premium), Plaintiff/Defendant through this interface. 

This article will show you how to regroup Assignee names in 4 different ways. 
For other types of data, the 1st and 3rd possibilities will apply. 

Firstly, save your analysis by using the dedicated button at the top right of the analysis dashboard, and define a name and a folder to save your analysis. 

You can now use the Data Rules menu > Create a new rule :

The Assignees are sorted by occurrences: how many times this name is present in your analysis.

Note for Premium Users : you will see Assignee names from the set of analyzed families and from the citing/cited patents of these families.

1st possibility to regroup Assignee names: select and group

When selecting at least 2 Assignees in the list, the action options will be displayed.

The 1st option is "Group":

Once you have grouped the desired names, the system will display the saving rules options:

1. New rule / Existing rule
   
2. Scope
   
3. Name
   
4. Description

If you want to re-use an existing rule, select the related choice, and choose the desired rule. 

Here, we will be creating a new rule. 

'Scope' menu options are: 'Analysis' or 'User'. 
'Analysis'  will create the rule only for this analysis. 

'User' will create a rule shared between analysis and will remain available for any other analysis. 

The 'User' option allows to capitalize your work > you can re-use a previous rule and increase the list of Assignee names behind a grouping.

'Name' is a text box > type here the Assignee name that you want to see displayed in the graphs when applying this rule. 

'Description' allows you to enter anything to help you in the future to know more about how and when this rule has been created.

When the rule is created, the grouping is applied and the Assignee list is refreshed with the regrouped item in in bold / 3-blocks icon:

If ever you missed something and want to add a new Assignee within an existing group, first select the assignee to add, and second the existing group. The "Group" button will turn on and the pop-up window will automatically detect the add to an existing rule.

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2nd possibility to regroup assignees : the Corporate tree

This option is fully automatic, and easy to use. 

Select one Assignee in the list, and click the 'Corporate tree' button:

This will start a search in our Corporate tree  (available in the Advanced search form > Assignee search).
It will display the position of the selected company name into one or several organizations:

Here, the selected company has 3 subsidiaries. 
The orange icon indicates that the company is part of a larger group. 

By clicking on this icon, the selected company is placed back inside the complete group:

The main purpose of this tool is to select the mother company. 

All the subsidiaries beneath will by selected and imported and saved inside 1 rule (see above the saving of rules).

In a few clicks, you have created a rule containing the whole list of subsidiarires of a specific group. 

Again, when the rule is created, the Assignee list is refreshed with a new item in bold:

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3rd possibility: Use a filter

The Assignee list can be filtered by using the "Filter results" text box on top of the Assignees list. 

Just type at least 3 characters - example:

The list will be refined on the names containing these characters. 

You can select one or all of the items, and create a rule as done previously.

When a filter is active, a special button is displayed on the right hand panel : "Use filter as a rule":

The rule creation is exactly the same as detailed above.

The main specificity of a rule created from a filter is the pattern used by the rule, in addition of a regular name-based grouping. 

This pattern will run a search +CARL+ in the assignee list after the rule is created, and will match all the Assignee names containing these characters chain to regroup them under the rule's name.  

This is very useful if you have to create a rule on a distinctive assignee name. 

In this example, +CARL+ is not the best choice: this is a common first or last name, and in use inside several company names. 

The best thing would be to increase the filter scope, and use for example "+CARL ZEISS+" in order to match all the name's variations of a specific company. 

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4th possibility : Suggested grouping

This option is based on the orthographic similarity between names. 
You can run this wizard with the the button:

Similar names are regrouped and the wizard will suggest groupings - e.g.:

You can directly create the group by selecting all or part of the Assignee names.

This wizard is often used after the manual work on rules creation, and will help you to clear up quickly the rest of the Assignee names. 

This is also a good solution to increase the number of rules in your account, if the rules created with are defined in the "User" scope.

See more articles:

• Data rules management
• How to save an analysis and why