Patent Searching: Tools & Techniques »

David Hunt is the CEO and owner of Landon IP, Inc. He holds a BA and an MBA from the College of William & Mary and has worked as a senior manager in corporate strategy, market research, and competitive intelligence at the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) in McLean, Virginia. Mr. Hunt has served as a project manager at large and small companies in the information technology areas. He has considerable experience in operations management. Mr. Hunt is a member of PIUG and PATMG, which are the professional patent information users groups in the United States and England. He is a member of the International Trademark Association (INTA) as well as the Society for Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP).

Long B. Nguyen is the director of patent search quality for Landon IP, Inc. He holds an MS in engineering management from George Washington University, and a BS in mechanical engineering and a BA in economics from Syracuse University. Mr. Nguyen is a registered patent agent (No. 56,138) with several years of experience in patent prosecution at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). While at the USPTO as a patent examiner, he examined technologies that included traction devices, wheels and axles, and tire inflation systems. Mr. Nguyen also has experience in business methods.

Matthew Rodgers is the vice president of the Patent Search Group for Landon IP, Inc. He holds a BS in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. Mr. Rodgers has conducted research in semiconductor heat treatment and selective laser sintering. Additionally, he possesses significant experience in the analysis of metallurgical failure. Prior to joining Landon IP, Mr. Rodgers worked for several years as a patent examiner at the USPTO and as a technical specialist who conducted patent searches at other commercial patent search firms. He is a regular faculty member of the leading patent law training company, Patent Resources Group, Inc., of Charlottesville, Virginia.

Patent searches before prosecution help improve the defensibility of the future patent, and can dissuade the inventor from prosecuting at all. In our litigious society, the pre-examination preparation by an inventor, patent attorney, agent, or searcher can save the patent owner much time and money later on. But while quality patent searching is vital to intellectual property law, there are very few resources available on how an intellectual property professional should conduct a patent search. Patent Searching: Tools & Techniques provides a practical guide to the art and science of this task, along with essential information on patent law, patent search theory, and practice.

Editor David Hunt and his team of contributors at Landon IP, Inc.—one of the largest privately held patent search, analysis, and consulting firms in the United States—have drawn on their experience working for approximately 2,000 companies and 1,000 IP law firms to create an indispensable reference to patent searching procedures and techniques. They detail key principles and approaches that will work regardless of the specific tools you use, covering everything from the basic types of patent searches (including patentability, validity, infringement, clearance, state-of-the-art, and patent landscape) to the mechanics of searching, patent analysis, reporting search results, and more.

While the Internet has made simple searching easy, the volume of information available has in many ways made it less focused and harder to interpret findings. Patent Searching: Tools & Techniques helps professionals avoid information overload and identify just the information they need. It outlines criteria on how to select the most appropriate search tools and even provide current information on the major databases available. And with an abundance of illustrative tables, charts, and figures, this book makes complex material easy to read and understand.

Whether you're a patent examiner, patent attorney, commercial patent searcher, patent liaison, IP librarian, law professor, or competitive intelligence analyst, you'll find Patent Searching: Tools & Techniques to be just the guide you have been waiting for, with a range of approaches to patent searching that will be useful to you regardless of your technical expertise or role in the intellectual property community.

About the Editors     ix
About Landon IP, Inc.     xi
Acknowledgments     xiii
Preface     xvii
Patent Law and Examination as Context for Patent Searching     1
The U.S. Patent System     2
The Benefits of Patent Protection     3
Harmonization of Patent Laws     4
The Paris Convention     4
The Patent Cooperation Treaty     5
Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)     5
American Inventors Protection Act of 1999 (AIPA)     5
The Priority Date     6
The U.S. Provisional Application     6
Continuing Applications     6
Nonprovisional Applications     6
Sections of a Patent     7
A Note about Reading the Specification and the Claims     8
Sections of a Patent File History     8
Look before You Leap: Considerations before Filing     10
Patent Examination Process     11
The Job of the Patent Examiner     12
The Examiner Follows the Courts     12
The Examiner Follows Patent Examining Procedure     12
Administrative Handling of the Patent Application     12
Actual Patent Examination     13
The Examiner Reviews Cited Patents and Nonpatent Publications     15
The Examiner Conducts an Inventor Search ("Double Patenting" Search)     16
The Examiner Applies the References     17
After Patent Grant     17
Backlog of Patent Applications     18
Types of Patent Searches     21
Patentability     21
What Is a Patentability Search?     21
When Is a Patentability Search Needed?     22
What Needs to Be Searched in a Patentability Search?     23
What the Searcher Needs to Know to Search Successfully     23
Validity     24
What Is a Validity Search?     24
When Is a Validity Search Needed?     24
What Needs to Be Searched in a Validity Search?     25
Infringement     26
What Is an Infringement Search?     26
When Is an Infringement Search Needed?     27
What Needs to Be Searched in an Infringement Search?     27
Clearance     28
What Is a Clearance Search?     28
When Is a Clearance Search Needed?     28
What Needs to Be Searched in a Clearance Search?     29
State of the Art     30
What Is a State-of-the-Art Search?     30
When Is a State-of-the-Art Search Needed?     30
What Needs to Be Searched in a State-of-The-Art Search?     30
Patent Landscape     31
What is a Patent Landscape Search?     31
Benefits of Prior Art Searching     31
The Mechanics of Searching     35
Introduction     35
Properly Scoping the Search     37
Identifying Subject Features: Problem-Solution Approach     37
Generating Keywords     39
Selecting Classification Areas     41
U.S. Patent Classification (USPC) System     41
USPC Index (www.uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/uspcindex/indextouspc.htm)     42
USPC Keyword Search (www.uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/)     42
Reviewing Closely Related Patents     43
Finding Subclasses with the Help of a Patent Examiner     45
IPC (International Patent Classification)     46
ECLA (European Patent Office Classification)     47
FI/F-Term     47
Preparing Initial Text Queries     47
Conducting the Search     51
Evaluating Patent Documents     52
The Sections of a Patent and Their Usefulness in Patent Searching      52
Titles     52
Abstracts     52
Descriptions of the Invention     53
Claims     53
Drawings     53
Determining Relevancy According to the Invention Subject Features     53
Evaluating Patent Documents in Different Search Types     60
Patentability and Validity as Applied to 35 United States Code (USC) [section] 102 and 103     60
Identifying the Subject Features for a Patentability Search     60
Identifying the Subject Features for a Validity Search     60
Identifying the Subject Features for an Infringement Search     62
Identifying the Subject Features for a Clearance or Freedom to Operate Search     62
Classification Searching     63
Core Classification Searching     64
Peripheral Classification Searching     66
Discrepancies in the U.S. Patent Classification System     67
Full- Text Searching     68
Citation Searching     72
Backward Citation Searching     73
Forward Citation Searching     73
Searching Foreign Patent Documents     74
Paris Convention for the Protection of International Property     75
The European Patent Organization     76
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)     77
Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT)     77
National Authorities     78
Searching Full-Text Major Foreign Patent Documents     79
Keywords in Foreign Languages and Simple Translations     79
Using Machine Translators to Assess Foreign Art     80
Searching Abstract-Only Databases     81
Value-Added Tools     82
Derwent World Patent Index (DWPI)     82
Searching Nonpatent Literature (NPL)     82
Issues Peculiar to Certain Technical Disciplines     84
Biotechnology     84
Biosis     87
Biotechabs/Biotechds     87
Chemical Abstracts     88
Cab Abstracts     88
Chemical     88
Business Methods     90
Computer, Software, and Electronics     92
Mechanical Engineering     105
Estimating Search Time     106
Patent Analysis     109
The Precursor to Patent Analysis     109
Searches versus Analyses: What's the Difference?     110
Features of Patent Analyses and Reporting     112
Establish Clear Objectives     112
The Importance of the Data      112
The Trouble with Shortcuts     113
Capturing the Data Set     114
Processing the Results     115
Displaying Results     116
Sample Patent Analysis Report     117
Approaches to Reporting Search Results     127
Purpose of the Search Report     128
Anatomy of a Search Report     129
Writing a Summary     129
Presenting the Subject Matter     130
Discussing References     132
Writing Discussions     134
Example: Hamster Health Spa     135
Indicating Claims     136
Prioritizing References     137
Central References     138
Peripheral References     139
Central and Peripheral References     140
Search History     141
Classification Areas     142
Databases Accessed     143
Examiners Contacted     143
Conclusion     143
Search Tools     145
The Availability of Patent Information     145
Criteria for Selecting Search Tools     146
Data Coverage     147
Document Delivery     147
Import and Export Functions      148
Pricing     148
Usability     149
Company Strength     149
When to Select a Search Tool     150
Breadth and Depth of Data Coverage     151
Data Sources for Chemical Searches     151
Data Sources for Mechanical Searches     154
Data Sources For Electrical/Computer Searches     156
Patent Data Sources for Electrical and Computer Searches     156
NPL Sources for Electrical Searches     156
Data Sources for Business Methods Searches     157
Methods of Access     159
Text Search Syntax     159
Discussion of Specific Search Tools     160
USPTO Search Room     160
U.S. Patent and Trademark Depository Libraries (PTDL)     161
Micropatent Patent Web     161
Examiner Assisted Search Tool (EAST)     164
Thomson Delphion     166
Questel-Orbit     167
PatAnalyst     167
Minesoft PatBase     169
Access to Nonpatent Literature     170
The Internet     173
The Internet Needs a Skilled Searcher     175
Meta-Search Engines     175
DialogWeb      175
IP.com     176
IEEE Xplore     176
NCBI     177
Searching Journals     177
Conference Proceedings     178
Newspapers, Magazines, and Catalogues     179
Value-Added Capabilities of Search Tools     179
Alerting     179
Search History     179
Information and Image Importing and Exporting     180
Legal Status, Maintenance Fees, and Prosecution     181
Costs     181
Visualization     181
Conclusion     182
Index     183