{"id":55516,"date":"2022-09-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-13T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/35.208.6.27\/xlscout_new\/common-mistakes-in-patent-searches\/"},"modified":"2024-10-16T10:36:38","modified_gmt":"2024-10-16T10:36:38","slug":"common-mistakes-in-patent-searches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xlscout.ai\/ko\/common-mistakes-in-patent-searches\/","title":{"rendered":"General Mistakes in Patent Searches"},"content":{"rendered":"

Patent activity is increasing at an alarming rate, as is patent information. The role of a patent searcher is to locate relevant prior art (both patent and non-patent literature) quickly and effectively to the invention under evaluation. Patent Searching is like searching for a needle in a haystack. Let us look at some common patent search mistakes that a searcher may make when conducting prior art searches.<\/span><\/p>\n

1. <\/span><\/b>Not fully understanding the purpose for the patent search<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

A searcher conducts a patent search for a wide range of reasons: to determine the patentability of your invention, to determine the validity of a patent; or to invalidate the patent of a competitor. It could be for a Freedom-to-Operate (FTO), an infringement, or a patent landscape search. Sometimes the inventor or applicant is unsure why a patent search is required. If there is any reason for suspicion, clear it up before beginning the search. Agree on what you want to search for.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

2. Failure to comprehend the scope of the patent search<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

You must understand what a specific type of patent search entails. When conducting a patentability search, novelty search, or a prior art search, a patent searcher cannot limit the search to only patents or patents in a few jurisdictions or only for the last 20 years. The reason for this is that any disclosure of the inventive concept in any publicly available work (prior art) anywhere around the world is critical for that assessment. You do not need to search for non-patent literature during a clearance search or a freedom-to-operate search because the focus is on in-force and active patent applications. This type of search also has a date and jurisdiction restriction. Also, consider whether you want to limit your search to patent families or not. In a Freedom-to-Operate (FTO) search, for example, every relevant patent family member should be searched and evaluated. In contrast, you can limit a patent Landscape search to one member per family.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

3. Inadequate background research on the invention<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

If you skip the background reading, you may miss out on insights into the scope, function, and applications of the invention under consideration. Look up the topic on the internet in knowledge repositories, industry-specific websites, scientific journals, and so on.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

4. Not recognizing all the subject features<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

A thorough understanding of the scope of the invention is required for an effective patent search.\u202f If the features of the invention are unclear, the search will be ambiguous. Divide the invention into distinct, necessary, and searchable features. It will help you formulate patent search queries that cover all aspects of the invention. If you have any doubts about the features, check with the inventor.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

5. Using only free patent databases<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

The coverage or search functionalities provided by free databases do not compete with those provided by <\/span>commercial patent databases<\/span><\/a> such as <\/span>XLSCOUT<\/span><\/a>. Even if you search across <\/span>multiple free databases<\/span><\/a>, you still risk missing out on many relevant records. Because non-English authorities such as China, Japan, and Korea publish so many inventions, the quality of translations can have a significant impact on your search results. Furthermore, if the patent search project is critical and budget and time are not constraints, it is best to conduct a novelty search on more than one commercial database. It would assist in accounting for differences in data coverage, translations, data organization, and patent retrieval across databases.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

XLSCOUT <\/span>Novelty Checker<\/span><\/a>, a prior art search or novelty search tool helps you in conducting a patentability search or novelty search, or prior art search on your idea or invention. The Novelty Checker also provides <\/span>an automated novelty search report<\/span><\/a> and utilizes <\/span>Patent Para-BERT technology<\/span><\/a> to provide the relevant and precise key-feature mapping w.r.t the prior art. In terms of data, XLSCOUT has access to 150 million+ patents from over 100+ jurisdictions, 220 million+ research publications, global litigation & SEP data, problems data, etc.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

6. Inadequate understanding of the capabilities of the patent search database<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

Knowing your patent search database\u2019 search capabilities before conducting patent searches will save you time, help you formulate better & comprehensive search queries, and provide you with the best search results. So, to get the most out of the patent search database, make sure you through its features.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

7. Formulation of a search strategy utilizing a variety of approaches<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

If you keep your patent search too broad, you will encounter a lot of irrelevant results, and you will have to go through a long screening process before you can begin the actual analysis. On the other hand, if you only search for a few specific terms, you will miss out on relevant documents. You can be certain of an optimal prior art search if you combine broad and narrow approaches.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

8. Errors in relevant field searches<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

Determine which fields to search for based on the purpose of your analysis, such as title, abstract, claims, full text, other bibliographic data, and so on. If you only search in TAC (title, abstract, and claims) for your patentability search or do not search in claims for infringement or invalidity searches, you may miss important documents. Not only that but knowing what keywords to search for in which field is critical. Searching for a broad term like cancer in the description field would generate far too many results.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to the standard search fields, XLSCOUT has <\/span>a searchable problems database<\/span><\/a> where users can also search for the problems being solved by patents. This helps in looking out for prior art or patents solving similar problems.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

9. Making syntax errors<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n