News and New Products

Innovation-aid software gets infusion of 1.3 million IEEE documents

The collaboration ties the IEEE's Xplore digital library to Goldfire Innovator's knowledge base.

By Matthew Miller, Editor in Chief, EDN.com -- EDN, 8/20/2008

Invention Machine has announced the addition of 1.3 million technical documents from the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) to its Goldfire Innovator software tool, which helps engineers and manufacturers generate and research product-development ideas.

The collaboration ties the IEEE's Xplore digital library to Goldfire Innovator's knowledge base, which will automatically receive updates of new content. Goldfire users will be able to discover IEEE technical documents, including journal articles and conference proceedings, as part of the software's "concept retrieval" process. To access the full text, users will have to be or become IEEE members, subscribe to Xplore, or purchase articles a la carte.

Invention Machine claims that Goldfire accelerates innovation by giving companies the ability to use natural-language queries to discover both internal and external information, which it organizes using a patented semantic engine. The tool allows companies to express both problems and opportunities in a common language, then helps them access precise information to help generate ideas, validate those ideas, and analyze trends such as patent activity, according to the company.