US information and analytics provider IHS has made its sixth acquisition so far this year, paying around $40m for semantic research technology provider Invention Machine.

Invention Machine, which is headquartered in Boston, MA with offices in Paris, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo and Minsk, offers a patented semantic question-answering intelligence platform called Goldfire. This tool is designed to help companies translate ideas into products, by providing an understanding of market or technology trends, and identifying both new markets and potential failure points in new products.

The latest buy follows hot on the heels of IHS’s recent $135m acquisition of engineering information resource GlobalSpec.

IHS President and COO Scott Key (pictured) says the acquisitions will allow IHS to provide ‘a revolutionary knowledge management solution that will work seamlessly access IHS products, external content and a customer’s internal information.’ He adds: ‘It gives us the opportunity to further expand within target customers by creating new products for quality, standards applicability and knowledge management.’

Web sites: www.ihs.com and www.inventionmachine.com .

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