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Innovation - What is a prior art patent search and why it is important?

Innovation:

 What is a prior art patent search and why it is important?

Prior art search:

Prior art refers to scientific and technical information that exists before the effective date of a given patent application. Prior art may be found in any public documents such as patents, technical publications, conference papers, marketing brochures, products, devices, equipment, processes and materials.

A prior art search refers to an organized review of prior art contained in public documents. Prior art searches can be of various kinds:

  • Patentability searches conducted by an inventor before filing a patent application;
  • Invalidity searches in litigation conducted by the accused infringer; 
  • Patent examination searches conducted by a government examiner in order to determine whether to grant or reject a patent application
  • and State of-the-art searches for information in a technical field. 


In all cases, searches are conducted using different kinds of databases, from public databases of issued patents on the Internet to exhaustive databases including technical literature.

Searches can be done by legal professionals, by scientists or by researchers.
Sometimes, defendants in patent litigation even offer bounties for invalidating prior art.


Why it is important:

A patent agent or inventor is not required to search for prior art. However, there may be advantages to performing a search in some cases. A prior art patentability search may be conducted before the filing of a patent application to gauge the prospects of obtaining broad claim coverage.

The purpose of conducting such a search is to find references related to the claimed invention in order to make an assessment of its patentability.

Prior art searches are a good way to get information on developments in the field of invention. Prior art searches may sometimes reveal what competitors consider worth protecting. Search results may be a critical factor in deciding whether to file a patent application. If a prior art search reveals references that anticipate the claimed invention, the inventor and the patent agent should consider how they can “avoid the prior art” by drafting the claims to overcome it.

If this is not possible, they may wish to consider whether filing the patent application is still appropriate. In some cases, a prior art search may reveal patent references that are problematic. Just because you see a reference that seems similar to the invention does not mean the proposed application should be abandoned. The prior art may instead warrant a “design around” effort to see how the claims of the new application can be changed to avoid the prior art.



So to identify what is out there similar to proposed idea to avoid the time and money loss for patent filing as well as to identify any alternative way to design to avoid the prior art in the claims!

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