Sopheon, the international software and services company, announced today that the United States Patent Office has granted a patent covering the architecture and methodology at the center of principal software applications offered by the company.

The new patent (number US, 6,632,251 B1) protects Sopheon software architecture that is based on the disciplines of organizational science, language technology and data analysis. The technology is designed to strengthen critical knowledge- and language-intensive business processes by triggering innovation and effecting automatic reuse of information. The key to its value is the technology’s capacity for creative content mining. When deployed in support of product development, for instance, it responds to a user’s subject interest by proactively mining the organization’s knowledgebases around the globe, alerting the user to related product development projects in progress or from the past and retrieving relevant information. The technology not only informs the user of potentially instructive or redundant project activity, it can spot and present previously unconsidered knowledge that has the potential to stimulate valuable new ideas, insight and innovation. The technology also incorporates terminology management features that ensure users create and publish content in a controlled and standardized way, thereby improving communication within and among cross-functional teams even across long intervals of time.

"This latest grant means that core Sopheon patents have now been approved both in the U.S. and Europe," said Andy Michuda, chief executive officer of Sopheon. "The resulting international protection covers intellectual property that is at the heart of Sopheon’s differentiation and central to the value proposition of our current offerings and to our roadmap for expanding the capabilities of our products. It is an independent validation of the importance and uniqueness of the technology we’ve created."

The newly patented architecture is already in use. It has been implemented, for example, by teaching hospitals in the Netherlands to improve communication and collaboration among doctors, nurses and other health care professionals in applying the latest evidence and best practices to the provision of patient care. In another illustration of the technology’s utility, a chemicals manufacturer is using it as an integral part of plant and product management processes to improve compliance with regulatory requirements.

Planning is underway for integration of the patented capabilities into Sopheon’s Accolade system where it will enhance cross-functional product development. The technology will help teams operating in global companies create, publish and reuse deliverables and content from the time a product is conceived as an idea, throughout its development and launch, and until it is commercially retired.

Work on the software architecture represented by the new patent began in 1993. Early development was supported by grants from Europe’s Eureka initiative under the BTIP international technology program. A patent was issued in Europe in 2001 that protects this same intellectual property. Since 2000, Sopheon has also been awarded U.S. and European patents on the advanced software architecture that underpins expert-location and other major components of collaboration and knowledge-sharing technology within its solutions.