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Glossary · Areas

# Watch for R&D: patents, publications and an up-to-date state of the art

**In short** 

Watch for R&D is the continuous monitoring of patents, scientific publications and funded projects in an organisation's research lines. It helps you know what has been protected and researched before committing resources, keep the state of the art up to date, and document the novelty that the Frascati Manual and, in Spain, the R&D tax credit require. It does not replace a freedom-to-operate analysis.

## Why does novelty make watching necessary?

The OECD’s Frascati Manual 2015, the international methodology for measuring R&D, requires an activity to meet five criteria to be considered R&D: being novel, creative, uncertain in its outcome, systematic and transferable or reproducible[\[1\]](https://www.innguma.com/en/solutions/r-and-d/#ref-1). The first cannot be asserted without knowing what already exists.

In Spain the requirement has tax consequences. To apply the tax credit under Article 35 of the Spanish Corporate Income Tax Act (Ley del Impuesto sobre Sociedades), R&D requires objective novelty in its field of application, whereas technological innovation only needs to be new to the company itself. The binding reasoned report (Informe Motivado Vinculante), issued by the General Secretariat for Innovation or by the CDTI for projects that receive their aid, provides legal certainty on that classification[\[2\]](https://www.innguma.com/en/solutions/r-and-d/#ref-2). A dated, sourced state of the art is the way to support objective novelty.

## Which public patent databases to use and for what

| Database | Body | What it offers | Use in watching |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Espacenet | European Patent Office (EPO) | Patent documents from around the world, from 1782, free of charge[\[3\]](https://www.innguma.com/en/solutions/r-and-d/#ref-3) | Searching by classification, applicant and family |
| PATENTSCOPE | World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) | International PCT applications in full text on the day they are published, plus national and regional collections[\[4\]](https://www.innguma.com/en/solutions/r-and-d/#ref-4) | Detecting competitors’ PCT applications as soon as they are published |
| INVENES and CEO | Spanish Patent and Trademark Office (OEPM) | Inventions in Spanish with effects in Spain, and access to public files[\[5\]](https://www.innguma.com/en/solutions/r-and-d/#ref-5) | Following Spanish applicants and the status of each file |
| Technology watch bulletins | OEPM, with technology centres and platforms | A free quarterly selection of patents published by sector[\[6\]](https://www.innguma.com/en/solutions/r-and-d/#ref-6) | A sector-wide overview for comparison; it does not replace a watch of your own |

## How to build a patent watch that does not miss documents

1.  **Combine classification and keywords.** The Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC), managed by the EPO and the United States Patent and Trademark Office, has around 250,000 entries and is extended when new technical fields emerge[\[7\]](https://www.innguma.com/en/solutions/r-and-d/#ref-7). A document that describes your technology in other vocabulary still falls under the same code.
2.  **Watch by applicant with all its variants.** Subsidiaries, former names and different spellings of the same group.
3.  **Follow families, not loose documents.** The same invention is filed in several offices; counting it several times distorts a competitor’s activity.
4.  **Allow for the publication lag.** The EPO publishes European applications 18 months after the filing or priority date, unless the applicant requests earlier publication[\[8\]](https://www.innguma.com/en/solutions/r-and-d/#ref-8). What you see today is what was filed a year and a half ago; only continuous watching keeps that lag to a minimum.
5.  **Distinguish application, grant and legal status.** A published application is not a granted patent, and a granted patent may have lapsed in a particular country.
6.  **Note why each document matters.** The line affected, the relevant claim and the project it is linked to.

Watching detects signals and risks, but the assessment of freedom to operate or patentability is for industrial property specialists.

## Publications and projects: the other half of the state of the art

Many research lines are published before they are patented, or never patented. That is why a complete state of the art combines patents with scientific literature and funded projects:

-   **Journals and bibliographic databases in your field.** PubMed, from the United States National Library of Medicine, is the reference in the biomedical field[\[9\]](https://www.innguma.com/en/solutions/r-and-d/#ref-9); each discipline has its own.
-   **Funded projects.** In CORDIS, the Commission’s portal on EU-funded research, each project is listed with its participants, results and publications[\[10\]](https://www.innguma.com/en/solutions/r-and-d/#ref-10): it shows which groups work on a topic and with which industrial partners.
-   **Technical standards under development.** They set requirements that the development will have to meet when it reaches the product.
-   **Reference groups.** Who publishes regularly and with whom they collaborate, to decide whom to cooperate with or whom to hire.

## Mistakes that weaken a state of the art

-   Running the search only once, when writing the project report, and not updating it during the project.
-   Searching only by English keywords and leaving out documents in other languages or with different terminology.
-   Not recording the date of each search, which makes it impossible to show what was known when a decision was taken.
-   Confusing novelty for the company with objective novelty, which is what R&D requires.
-   Storing documents in personal folders, without the link to the source or the reason they were selected.

## What Innguma offers an R&D team

Innguma continuously monitors patents and specialist sources in the lines the team defines. Signals reach Factory, the space where Innguma processes and structures them, and where the AI groups duplicates and classifies them by technology, entity and type of event. The researcher validates what is relevant and takes it to the Library with tags by project and a comment on why it matters.

Over time, the Library becomes a living state of the art: each document keeps its linked source and the date it was validated, and can be consulted before writing a project report or reviewing a project. The technical newsletter is sent from the Library to each research line.

Innguma offers connectivity through the Model Context Protocol (MCP), currently compatible with ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot and Gemini. If your organisation enables it, you can search for and summarise what has been published on a technology from your assistant. Your AI provides analytical capacity. Innguma provides context.

Use case

## How the day-to-day changes

**Today, in many teams** 

-   Patent database searches at the start of each project, and nothing more.
-   Unclassified alerts by email, not linked to any project.
-   A state of the art that has to be redone for each report.

**A day with Innguma** 

1.  Monday 
    
    The technical newsletter includes a patent application published by a competitor in one of your lines, with a link to the document.
    
2.  Wednesday 
    
    You validate two articles on the priority technology and tag them with the project they affect.
    
3.  Before a project report 
    
    You retrieve from the Library everything validated on the subject, with date and source, as the basis of the state of the art.
    

**Less risk of duplicating work** 

You know what has been published and protected before committing months of development.

**A continuous state of the art** 

It grows with each validation instead of being redone for each project.

**Documented novelty** 

Each document carries a date and source, which backs the technical justification of the project.

**How Innguma does it** 

-   Continuous monitoring of patents and specialist sources in the lines you define.
-   AI classification by technology, entity and type of event, with duplicates grouped.
-   Library with tags by project, comments and linked sources.

**What does not change** 

The technical reading of each document and the legal assessment remain with researchers and industrial property specialists.

**Where to start** 

1.  A watch on *competitors' patent applications and grants*
2.  A watch on *scientific publications in priority lines*
3.  A watch on *funded projects and research results*

[See it with my topics](https://www.innguma.com/en/demo/)

Illustrative example of a typical use.

## Sources and references

1.  \[1\] [OECD. Frascati Manual 2015: Guidelines for Collecting and Reporting Data on Research and Experimental Development. 2015](https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/2015/10/frascati-manual-2015_g1g57dcb.html)
2.  \[2\] [Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, General Secretariat for Innovation. Frequently asked questions on Binding Reasoned Reports (Informes Motivados Vinculantes), version 2. 2026](https://www.ciencia.gob.es/dam/jcr:eeb0edec-19d7-446e-8e83-2e39a26767eb/FAQs_IMV.pdf)
3.  \[3\] [European Patent Office. Espacenet: free access to patent information](https://www.epo.org/en/searching-for-patents/technical/espacenet)
4.  \[4\] [WIPO. PATENTSCOPE](https://www.wipo.int/en/web/patentscope)
5.  \[5\] [Spanish Patent and Trademark Office. Search inventions: INVENES, CEO and other databases](https://www.oepm.es/es/herramientas/buscador-base-de-datos/buscador-invenciones/index.html)
6.  \[6\] [Spanish Patent and Trademark Office. Technology watch bulletins](https://www.oepm.es/es/informacion-tecnologica/vigilancia-tecnologica/boletines-de-vigilancia-tecnologica/)
7.  \[7\] [European Patent Office. Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC)](https://www.epo.org/en/searching-for-patents/helpful-resources/first-time-here/classification/cpc)
8.  \[8\] [European Patent Office. European Patent Convention, Article 93: publication of the European patent application](https://www.epo.org/en/legal/epc/2020/a93.html)
9.  \[9\] [National Library of Medicine. PubMed](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/)
10.  \[10\] [EU Publications Office. CORDIS, EU-funded research results](https://cordis.europa.eu/)

## Related

- [Watch for innovation teams: which technologies are gaining traction and which funding arrives in time](https://www.innguma.com/en/solutions/innovation/)
- [Watch for product teams: competitors' launches and the requirements that reach the design](https://www.innguma.com/en/solutions/product/)
- [Watch filters: what they are, how they work and why they decide the quality of a watch](https://www.innguma.com/en/resources/software/filters/)
- [What sources can Innguma monitor?](https://www.innguma.com/en/resources/faq/sources/)

- [Request a demo for R&D](https://www.innguma.com/en/demo/)
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