PATENT SEARCH IS NOW EASY WITH DATABASE TOOLS

In present scenario, the patent searches are conducted to access the current market status and competitiveness of a product. Patent searches are mainly conducted by companies/corporate to manage their technological portfolio and to have knowledge about their competitor’s business strategies. The patent searches are also conducted to determine the vital criteria of Patentability such as novelty, non-obviousness and industrial applicability. For a particular goal of a search, the patent searches are conducted either worldwide or with limitation to particular jurisdiction, and sometimes in reference to the priority date of their invention. As per search requirements, the search is conducted over both patent and non-patent literatures. However in this article we will talk about the steps to make patent search on patent literature using patent databases.

Fundamental Strategy for Patent Search

For conducting a patent search a clear-cut idea about the technology is essential along with the methodology.

Subsequent steps will provide the simple method of patent search using database tools:

• Pinpoint the Technology – First and foremost is understanding the technology of the invention;
• Pick out the Key Terminology – identify the key words of the invention, which better describes the technology;
• Select the Search Database Tools – Choose databases for analysis;
• Perform Keyword based Search – keyword based search is conducted using general search option available in tools, to search documents with specific key terminology. This search option works along with truncations (+, ?, #) and operators (OR, AND, NOT..) to obtain required text and key concepts of relevant documents;
• Identify specific Patent Classes – To make search more relevant, patent classes can be identified from mined reference patents.

It can be done, either by identifying the pertinent classes that are cited in relevant patent documents,
Or by using patent classification dictionaries for International Patent Classification (IPC), US Patent Classification (USPC), Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC), European Patent Classification (ECLA), FI and F term of Japan, and so on.

• Conduct Classification based Search – then conduct classification code search using the option in tools.
• Analyze and Make out a Final Report – analyze all obtained patent documents that are published within specific classes; finally, prepare a report of the search using the patents documents that are more pertinent to the target invention.

Database Tool provide options to make Searches even more unique:

Search engines may operate by combining both keyword and classification code together to obtain exact relevant patent documents for specific technology from massive data.  Search engines may also conduct analysis such as FTO or infringement, using patent number search option with different criteria such as patent number, publication number, application number and priority number. The database tools have options to handle search queries exclusively for specific companies or particular applicant or inventors to provide more comprehensive and precise results.

Patent Search is mandatory for companies- why?

Patents are one of the foremost assets for a technology based company. They require patent searches for making various decisions like:

• Whether to file a patent application or not, they conduct a Patentability search.
• Whether they are free to operate in a market, they need to carry out Freedom to Operate (FTO) Search.
• To keep an eye over technological advancement and advantages of a competitor, they need to watch patent news updates regularly.
• To invalidate/oppose somebody’s patent they require an invalidation/opposition search
• To re-assure validity of their own patent, they need to conduct validation search
• To identify past and current technological advancement, they require a landscape search.

Given above are some benefits, however, Patent search has vide utility for corporate, it furnish them by answering many unanswered questions.

IMPORTANCE OF PAID PATENT DATABASES OVER FREE PATENT DATABASES

Patent search and analysis has become mandatory from big corporate to small companies to develop their business, set up there market position and to have a thorough learning of their competitors. Patent search and analysis can be done using two types of databases, i.e., public database and paid databases. Public database are generally freely available database, where you need not subscribe or pay to access to access the database. However, conducting searches in freely available databases has many limitations with respect to limitations of search options, quality of data retrieved, downloading of bulk data for analysis, whereas the paid patent databases produce excellent in-depth result over the free databases by retrieving required prior art data within short duration of time.

Limitations of Public/Free Patent Databases

Freely available patent databases provide only few search fields. Even, the search cannot be made according to various bibliographic fields too. Further, in many of the free database, the search option is available through Keywords in Bibliographic fields, or sometimes even limited to searching into Abstract through keywords. How a search for legal purposes can  be complete through that search? For legal purposes, a depth search is required in full body of description, as novelty and patentability cannot be determined against a patent document, till the time whole document is not scanned. Further, a freedom to operate search is incomplete till the time all the independent claims are searched analyzed. An invalidity search is incomplete till the time all the claims of a patent document is invalidated. Further, the searching and ranking algorithms are not as up-to-date in a free database, as they are in the paid database, generally this effects quality of data retrieved, speed of retrieval, quality of analysis and other such aspects while using free database. Free patent databases operate with limitation to jurisdictions; hence one can retrieve data only from specific country.  Free patent database tools doesn’t possess translator and lacks natural language processing capacity.

To sum up, the free database have the below limitations and difficulties:

• Algorithm Limitations,
• Limitations and Restrictions in using Boolean and Operators,
• Limitations in downloading required Patent documents,
• Not user friendly,
• No translation support,
• Data limited to one or few jurisdictions only,
• More irrelevance data results as output.

Need Paid Patent Database – Why??

Big companies and corporate are always keen to extend their boundary of business, therefore they are very cautious about patent litigation, inturn they prefer patent analysis to know the current status of their product in particular jurisdiction.  R&D institutions, Universities, SMEs, MSMEs and IP firms also opt for patent analysis to study about the status of their invention.  Search Engines of paid patent database cater these people with elaborate search result and gives valuable suggestion to proceed further in their invention and business with less time consumption.

Specific Features of Paid Patent Databases

Paid patent databases are much preferred than free databases as they produce reliable results with good quality. Paid databases have numerous features compared to free databases; few of them are given below:

Patent family search

Search engines of paid patent databases are designed to search patent families of various technical domains which are published in different patent offices and produce a detailed report with full description and legal status; this saves time from searching each and every IPO websites.

Translator

Paid patent databases provide translator option for translating the non-English text to English text and to other required language. For some analysis the inbuilt translator provide excellent result within short duration of time with no efforts.

Words with case difference

Usually the search engine is not case sensitive, may terms in technical domains have case change nature such as cDNA, this cause confusion over normal words, therefore paid patent database tools have specific operators option over free databases to obtain exact technical term.

Charts

Paid patent database tools have facilities to prepare charts to have knowledge about patent family details, patent landscape analysis, IP Portfolio Management Life Cycle of companies or corporate and many more within short duration of time with quality results.

Global Data Coverage

The search engines of paid patent databases have been designed to search data globally without any restriction, thus one can find relevant patent document published by IPO of different countries and can easily download the relevant patent document.

Advanced analytical features

Paid patent databases possess many more analytical features such as technological landscape analysis, multilingual search option, IP portfolio life cycle management etc.

Comparative chart with Special Elements

Special elements	Free Patent database	Paid Patent Database
Maintenance and retrieval of past search history	No	Yes
Language Translator	No	Yes
Citation search feature	No	Yes
Claim Chart Preparation	No	Yes
Patent timeline or history analysis	No	Yes
Patent Publication alerts	No	Yes
Advanced Algorithm	No	Yes
Visual graphics based feature	No	Yes

Acquire the benefits of paid patent databases – How??

Paid patent databases have huge benefits over free patent databases. They save much time, effort and money when compared to free database. Paid patent databases are accessed using their respective websites with member login access. Some database tools have free trial option to practice and specific manual guide to learn about the features, these options help to know more about the database and facilitate to operate the search engine more easily.