Author: Santiago Lu

Company: Shanghai GreRoyalt Law Firm

Patent search refers to the process of selecting documents or information that meets a specific requirement from a large number of patent documents or patent databases according to one or several features. Fast search, advanced search, and number search are three ways of patent search. In this process, technical information that threatens the novelty and creativity of the target patent is found. This information is referred to as prior art or conflicting applications.

According to the Patent Examination Guidelines, existing technologies refer to technologies known to the public at home and abroad before the patent filing date. According to the disclosure methods, the following are mainly divided into the following areas:

Use publication. Publications are the carriers of technical information, and the forms of carriers for attaching technical information are diverse. It can be any type of printed or typed paper, such as patent documents, scientific and technical magazines, scientific books, academic papers, professional literature, textbooks, technical manuals, officially announced meeting notes or technical reports, newspapers, product catalogues, product catalogues, Advertising brochures, etc.; can also be audio-visual materials made by electricity, light, magnetism, photography, etc., such as microfilm, films, photographic film, video tapes, tapes, records, CDs, etc., and may also be in other forms，Data, such as data that exists on the Internet or other online databases.

Use public. Due to use, the technical solution is placed in a publicly available state. The specific methods include the ways in which the public can learn about the manufacturing, use, sales, import, exchange, gifts, demonstrations, and exhibitions of its technical content. However, no explanation about the technical content is given so that technical personnel in the technical field cannot control the product display of its structure and function or material composition, and it does not belong to the use disclosure. However, if a publicly available product is used, even if the product or device used needs to be destroyed to be able to know its structure and function, it still belongs to the use of disclosure.

Open in other ways. This other approach mainly refers to oral publicity, such as verbal conversations, reports, seminar speeches, radio, television, movies, and other methods that enable the public to learn about technical content.

The goals of patent search have already been listed. The next thing to consider is how to find these goals. To find these goals requires the realization of two conditions: on the one hand, people, and on the other hand, tools.

People are the main body initiating patent search, so it is very important to choose suitable ones. Because patent information is attached to a wide variety of carriers and presented in various languages, patent information itself is the legalization of technical languages. Therefore, this person must first acquire the skills in the relevant fields and have the corresponding legal knowledge. Second, the person must acquire the language of the searched information. If he searches for patents in the United States and Europe, he must at least understand the English technology in related fields. Terminology; Again, this person must have a certain amount of work experience in related fields, otherwise, even if he sees the existing technology, he cannot notice that it is less likely to consider the combination of related technologies; finally, this person must acquire certain patents. Search strategy, in the current era of information explosion, how to find relevant and comparative literature is also crucial.

The tool is a weapon for search personnel to search for patents. Workers must first sharpen their tools for good. A good database can help searchers solve many problems. Because technical information, especially patent documents, have to be submitted in various national, and relevant data are stored in each bureau. Therefore, if a database can be used to retrieve data published by each bureau without conversion, it can be used by search personnel. Save a lot of work. In addition, a good database should be a comprehensive data database with at least comprehensive patent data. The current database has an official database and a commercial database. The official databases include the database of the State Intellectual Property Office of China, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office database, the European Patent Office database, and the Patent Office of the Japan Patent Office; commercial data such as the Derwent database.

After the patent information is retrieved, deep processing is needed to be better used for patent invalidation. The process of deep processing is patent analysis. Regarding patent analysis, this article is not concerned. From the above cases and the determinants of the prior art and the patent search, it can be seen that a good job of patent search can lay a solid foundation for patent invalidation.