A Guide To Insights Of Prior Art Search For A Professional

People dealing with the search and authentication of patents may be very acquainted with the term prior art search. A prior art search is conducted to find out whether there is the existence of any kind of evidence that could render a patent valid or invalid. There exist three types of prior art searches in real, and they are completely based on the purpose they serve. These searches are novelty search, freedom to operate search, and the invalidity search. With the help of a provisional patent application search, you can effectively find out the prior arts that are the closest and define the scope of protecting the claims. As a result of this, there can be a decline in the time of prosecution as a result of the need for a few office actions along with claim amendments.

Earlier, it was found that the searchers of the prior art had enough access to sufficient resources, especially the USPTO, rather than the ordinary person. Also, they made use of special techniques for searching for a special database of patents effectively. However, these days almost 90 percent of information for conducting prior art searches are available on the internet. Hence, it is quite obvious that you can reliably conduct prior art searches on your own as the best search tools are available online.

What Are The Conditions When You Still Need A Lawyer?

You can conduct your prior art search on your own, but you are still in need of a lawyer. You need to be an expert-level innovator who can usually be familiar with existing fieldwork. However, it does not indicate that you have to go through the patent's entire process. Even if you can conduct your prior art search, you would still need a patent lawyer or attorney who can help you out in developing the strategy of patents and analyze their patentability. If you are working on any patent in the technical field where you probably do not have any prior experience, you should hire a patent attorney for conducting a prior art search of the patent.

Advantages Of Conducting A Prior Art Search

There are several benefits of conducting a prior art search, and you can enjoy these benefits by familiarizing yourself with the prior art-

• You can avoid applying for patents with claims that are not patentable and can get rejected very easily

• You can determine if the invention you made is novel in comparison to public art or not.

• You can develop a strong strategy of patent claim before the filing of the application of the patent.

• You can also account for a close prior art while drafting the patent application.

• You can understand how the idea fits into the field of technology.

• You can become prepared to discuss the invention with a patent attorney while explaining aspects of work that you can make patentable are.

Having known about the various merits of conducting a prior art search, let us look at some of the effective ways in which you can do the same.

1. Brainstorming The Keywords For Describing The Invention:- There are a plethora of reasons why some other patents would use certain unusual keywords. It may be because the industry has taken into acceptance some common terminologies that have transformed over time. Several industries may have been using different keywords that could describe similar concepts, and there may have been various filings of patents that have been translated from one language to another.

2. Searching The Databases:- A potential patent attorney will recommend the reference of some common and renowned databases for beginning the search. These may be Google patents, the USPTO search interface, Espace search interface, WIPO searching interface, and Patent Lens. A patent attorney will recommend you to make a list of the top 10 documents of patent against every keyword. By looking at the other documents which reference or are referenced by the concerned patent document. Often patent attorneys conduct forward and backward references for cross-search. While searching in the database, there is also a provision for “non-patent citations.” These documents are not found very easily, and patent attorneys usually request one from the patent's office.

3. Expanding The Search Beyond The Database:- Prior art search is not limited to the existing patent literature only. It is inclusive of all the ideas which are available publicly. A Prior-Art search expert will complete the search by extending it beyond the patent's searching only. The list given below is not considered exhaustive, but the prior art search could be inclusive of:-

• A search in Google Scholar for the scholarly publications

• The articles which are non-patent literature such as the articles, publications, and journals

• Information from any sites like Amazon

• The product pages of organizations that may be innovating in the same space.

4. Save All The Relevant Results As Well As Documents:-- While filing the patents, a prior art search professional would want to make a citation of the most relevant prior art that has been found in the USPTO. If the patent examiner has all the relevant references within the disposal, he might end up with a very strong patent. This would ensure the satisfaction of the person filing the patent in terms of satisfying the ethical duties of disclosure for reporting the prior art, thereby probably affecting the patentability of the claim.

5. Knowing When To Stop Searching:- The patent attorney's goal is not to keep searching for all the patent art present. Rather, it would be very wise to examine a prior art that is enough for gaining a robust and comprehensive knowledge of where the invention is standing in the industry.

Having known about the step-by-step procedure, it would be very easy for professionals conducting prior art searches to come out with fruitful results of their efforts. If the search is not giving much prior art, the patent attorney might be tempted to go on with the same, but anyone sensible would not call it a day.

Source:-https://dailygram.com/index.php/blog/838457/a-guide-to-insights-of-prior-art-search-for-a-professional/