NEWS

Patent information covers a large number of advanced technical information, and the full use of patent search can make enterprises achieve twice the result with half the effort in the operation process, and can save costs and reduce risks for enterprises. The application of patent search includes: Patent information retrieval in patent invalidation requests Patent information retrieval in technology introduction Patent information retrieval in technology innovation Patent information retrieval before product export Patent information retrieval in patent strategy research Patent information retrieval in competitor research

Patent information retrieval in patent invalidation claims

At present, the international market competition is becoming more and more fierce, and Chinese enterprises want to go abroad and enter the overseas market are facing more and more difficulties. Therefore, how to prevent Chinese enterprises from being caught unprepared by infringement lawsuits when their products go abroad, so that the application of intellectual property rights of Chinese enterprises is particularly important from passive to active. Among them, starting the patent invalidation procedure is one of the effective means to help enterprises get more benefits.

In practice, the following three situations generally occur to initiate patent invalidation proceedings.

First, when the enterprise is accused of infringement by the patentee, it usually starts the patent invalidation procedure and requests to declare the patent right of the patentee invalid;

Second, before the export of the product, the enterprise can search the risk patent in the target market, and can also declare the risk patent invalid request;

Third, for a specific technology in the industry, when it is believed that the patent right of the technology produces an unfair monopoly, the patent invalidation procedure may also be initiated.

In the procedure of patent invalidation request, the search of patent information mainly involves searching patent literature and non-patent literature to find out the documents that destroy the novelty and creativity of the granted patent, or searching the documents that contradict the application and searching the documents that lead to repeated authorization to carry out patent invalidation. In addition, patent invalidation can be applied based on whether the claim is supported by the specification and whether the patent is fully disclosed.

The basic steps of patent information retrieval in patent invalidation claims

1. Analyze the technical solutions for requesting invalidation of patents

Carefully read the full text of the patent requested to be declared invalid, master the technical points of the patent in detail, and investigate the background technology of the patent.

2. Read and analyze the claims and extract the search elements

The scope of protection of the claim is analyzed according to the specification of the patent seeking invalidation, and the search elements are extracted.

3. Determine the expression of search elements

According to the results of reading analysis, the search elements are determined, and the search expression is written.

4.Select the appropriate search system/database

Select the appropriate search system or literature database according to the time, country or regional scope of the search.

5. Construct a search style

According to the search elements, the search formula is constructed from different perspectives.

6.Browse the search results and make a preliminary judgment, adjust the search strategy

The retrieval strategy is adjusted according to the recall rate and precision rate of the search results.

7. Evaluation of novelty and creativity of technical solutions

According to the search results, the novelty and creativity of the patent requested for invalidation are evaluated and the evidence that can be found to invalidate the patent is found.

Patent information retrieval in technology introduction

Patented technology refers to the technology protected by the patent within the validity period, which has the characteristics of exclusivity in a certain time and region conferred by law. Without the permission of the patentee, no entity or individual may exploit the patented technology for production or business purposes. Patent transactions transfer patents between different economic entities in a paid way. The introduction of patent technology through patent transfer, patent license, etc., can enable enterprises to obtain a strong competitive advantage in a short time with less investment.

Patent search in technology introduction is a comprehensive search, which is a combination of patent technology information search, patentee search and patent legal status search, and its purpose is to provide a basis for comprehensive evaluation of introduced technology. In the early years, when our large enterprises introduced foreign patented technology, they did not timely search the legal status of the patent transferred to foreign companies, and bought many invalid patents at high prices, causing a lot of economic losses to enterprises and the country. Therefore, when an enterprise introduces a patent technology, searching the technical information, patentee and patent legal status of the introduced patent can provide a valuable reference for the enterprise in the introduction of patents and reduce the introduction cost for the enterprise.

Generally speaking, the introduction of patented technology needs to focus on the following four points:

1. Technical subject search and selection

The introduction of patent technology involves a huge amount of money and a high level of technology. Patent search can be used to judge the management direction, technical level and market layout of other enterprises, and thus formulate the correct response strategy. Knowing oneself and others is the key to winning the competition in the business market. In addition, enterprises should adopt a cautious attitude of "shopping around", through the comparison of multiple similar patented technologies, comprehensive consideration of commercial, technical, legal and other factors and bidders for bidding, negotiation and evaluation. Choose technology, price more competitive strength, more market position of the patented technology.

2. Verify the legal status to prevent patent fraud

Before the introduction of a patented technology, it is necessary to search to determine whether the patented technology is effective, and whether the technology has applied for a Chinese patent or whether it has obtained a Chinese patent. If the technology has not applied for a Chinese patent or has applied for a Chinese patent but has not obtained a Chinese patent right, or the Chinese patent right has been regarded by the administration as withdrawn, revoked by the administration or declared invalid, then the use of the patented technology in China does not pay patent royalties. Therefore, mastering the legal status of the introduction of patented technology is crucial to determining the cost of the introduced patented technology.

Patent rights have temporal and regional characteristics. The so-called timeliness refers to the differences in the patent law of various countries in the period of patent protection. Generally speaking, the period of protection of invention patent right is generally 10-20 years from the date of application. For the period of utility model and design patent right, most countries provide 5-10 years. The term of protection of invention patents, utility model patents and design patents as provided in the current patent Law of our country is 20 years, 10 years and 10 years respectively from the date of filing. It should be noted that not only the expiration of the protection period of the patented technology will result in the invalidation of the patent right, but also the failure to pay the annual fee on time, the failure to pay the patent certificate fee, the patentee's written declaration to give up or the patent right is completely invalidated.

The effect of the intellectual property rights obtained in accordance with the intellectual property laws of a country or region is limited to the domestic territory. For example, if a foreign patented technology that has not been patented in China has passed the priority period, the Chinese side can use it free of charge without paying royalties, provided that the products produced by using the technology must be sold in China or in countries where the technology is not patented. In addition, companies that consider patents valuable will generally apply for many family patents in different regions to facilitate the protection of the technology on a global scale. Therefore, the global distribution of patents introduced can be understood by searching patent families and their legal status.

3.Search the legal right holder and the same technology to avoid potential infringement risks

Before introducing a patent, verify that the licensor is the legal right holder. First, determine whether the patentee of the patent is the transferee, and then determine whether the patented technology to be introduced has the same or similar prior technology.

4.Search patent information, reasonable evaluation of technical value

After the completion of the patent legal status verification and infringement search, the transferee can further investigate the level of the imported technology and other situations by searching the relevant technology at home and abroad and conducting analysis and comparison, and grasp the advanced nature and implemensibility of the imported technology, so as to correctly estimate the value of the technical object. The technology chain is often involved in several patents, if the licensor only transfers, permits the transferee to use a patented technology without transfer, licenses the use of other related patented technology on the technology chain, or retains the key points as technical secrets, it may make the product produced by the transferee in accordance with the patent in terms of quality and performance indicators can not achieve the expected effect. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate whether the licensor's patent network on the technology chain is included in the scope of technology introduction to grasp the final implementation effect. 

Patent information retrieval in technological innovation

Technological innovation is to change the status quo of technology, and the technological innovation of enterprises is mainly reflected in the development of original new products, that is, to change the existing technology or products in a certain way.

Patent literature is the most rapid, comprehensive and systematic information resource that reflects the development of science and technology in the world. 90-95% of the inventions and creations in the world are recorded in patent literature every year, and 80% of them are only recorded in patent literature. According to the statistics of the World Intellectual Property Organization, the full use of patent documents can shorten the scientific research cycle by 60% and save scientific research costs by 40%. The Intellectual Property Research Institute of Japan conducted a survey of more than 300 companies on the economic effects of intellectual property. According to the survey, many companies believe that the most beneficial economic effect of the IP system is that "other companies' public information can be used as a source of information for their own research and development." It can be seen that the analysis and utilization of patent information have a wide range of applications in innovation decisions such as R&D investment, technology development, technology tracking and product positioning.

Therefore, in the research and development work, before the product research and development topic selection, project approval or investment, patent search can help enterprises fully understand the status quo of patent technology in related technology fields, key technologies, technology life cycle, and monitor the technology development trend in this field, core patent distribution, etc.; And it can help enterprises to fully understand the existing technical level of specific technical fields, understand the gaps and problems in related technical fields, establish scientific research topics at the latest and highest starting point, determine the correct research direction, improve the starting point of research and development, avoid repeated development, save time and scientific research funds.

Since the patent specification in the patent literature has a more detailed text description, and accompanied by charts and graphs, detailing the latest technical solutions to technical topics, in the process of development and research, patent literature search, appearing in the patent specification of the prior art description, technical solution details, claims, abstracts or drawings. It is helpful for scientific researchers to learn from others' technical ideas and technical means, open up ideas, inspire creative thinking, and avoid the technical traps of existing patents, timely discovery and innovative design as soon as possible.

In the later stage of research and development, in order to maintain the legitimate rights and interests of innovators and obtain commercial interests, and promote the continuous progress and sustainable development of technological innovation activities, the results of technological innovation of enterprises should be applied for patents in a timely manner, and patent search should be carried out before the application of new inventions, so as to better understand whether the invention has novelty and creativity, so as to make decisions on whether to apply for patents.

Patent information retrieval before product export

With the continuous enhancement of China's comprehensive national strength, China's competitiveness in the international market is also constantly improving, more and more enterprises plan or have their products into the international market. Due to the lack of patent information in Chinese enterprises for a long time, weak awareness of intellectual property protection, and lack of long-term strategic planning of intellectual property rights, infringement lawsuits frequently occur in international competition, resulting in export enterprises in the international competition repeatedly hit hard. Therefore, more and more enterprises begin to take the patent information retrieval of products before export as the core work before entering the overseas market to carry out. The retrieval of relevant patent legal information and the comprehensive analysis of this information before the export of products have become an important basis for enterprises to make decisions about the export of products.

Due to the regional characteristics of patents, the legal status of patents is generally published by the official website of intellectual property rights of the country granting the patent. However, since the legal status of patent is a kind of dynamic information, the patent legal information is generally queried through the patent search system of the country granting the patent right, and the query result is the status on or before the search date, and the subsequent changes in the legal status need long-term monitoring and tracking.

The patent search before export mainly includes the search for preventing infringement, the search for the legal status of risk patents and the search for the stability of risk patents.

Infringement prevention search is mainly aimed at finding risk patents for the features of products to be exported.

The search of legal status of risk patent is mainly to search the legal information of risk patent, including the patentee, the validity period, the litigation situation and so on. By analyzing the legal status of a patent or patent application, the validity of the patent can be judged according to the provisions on the calculation of the patent term and the relevant payment provisions in the patent law of each country, as well as the relevant announcements in the patent bulletin or the relevant data in the patent database.

For example, the US patent validity judgment: the patent applied before June 8, 1995, is valid for 17 years from the date of patent authorization, and the patent applied after June 8, 1995, is valid for 20 years from the date of application; The patent maintenance fee is paid every 4 years. If the information of the status of the patent search system is "E1", it means that the patent maintenance fee is not continued to be paid at the end of the first 4 years and the patent is terminated.

The stability search of risk patents is mainly to search whether there are prior technologies that affect the stability of the patent right before the filing date (priority date) of the risk patents, and check whether the risk patents are likely to be invalid.

To sum up, patent search before product export is a pathfinder for enterprises to go abroad and enter overseas markets. Only by finding out the knowledge status of product export target markets, predicting product infringement risks, and making timely response strategies to risks can Chinese enterprises move forward smoothly in overseas markets.

Patent information retrieval in patent strategy research

The strategic layout of patented technology in the operation process can not only save operating costs, improve research and development efficiency, but also can be invincible in the market competition.

The layout of enterprises in patent strategy mainly has the following aspects:

1,research and development project investigation 2,protection of innovation achievements

3, market risk avoidance 4, infringement litigation confrontation

5, competitor monitoring 6, industry dynamics tracking

7, patent validity investigation 8, the use of prior art

In view of the above situation, enterprises need to conduct the following searches:

1, technical subject search 2, patentability search

3, prevent infringement search 4, declare invalid search

5, patentee search 6, subject-specific patent monitoring

7, legal status search 8, public knowledge public patent search

Here is a brief introduction to the above search methods:

(1) Technical subject search

The subject matter of patented technology generally refers to more than one set of technical solutions with the same technical attributes. The same technical attributes can refer to the same specific technical field, or the same specific technical scope within the same specific technical field. Each of the technical topics mentioned here may contain more than one technical proposal.

Before the enterprise research and development project, it can carry out technical topic search for the topic to be developed, retrieve the relevant technical literature and patent data of the technical topic involved, and determine whether the topic technology to be developed already exists or there is a better technology according to the search results, so as to prevent the waste of repeated research and development.

(2) Patentability search

After the innovation results are published, before applying for patents, in order to determine the scope of protection of the technology and improve the application efficiency, it is necessary to conduct patentability search for the innovation results, mainly to evaluate the novelty and creativity of the scope of protection of the technological results.

(3) Preventing infringement search

Anti-infringement search refers to the search of patent information before a new industrial production activity (such as the production and sale of new products, the application of new technologies, etc.), in order to prevent the new production activity from infringing on the patent rights of others, so as to avoid patent disputes.

Before the product is listed or exported, enterprises need to find the patents with infringement risks in the target market, analyze the infringement status of these patents, and propose avoidance strategies for high-risk patents.

When the enterprise is accused of infringement or accuses others of infringement, determine whether the infringement is established and the scope of infringement, and recommend corresponding measures according to the analysis results.

(4) Invalidation search

After the product is listed, when the enterprise is accused of patent infringement and patent infringement litigation occurs, it usually starts the patent invalidation procedure and requests to declare the patent right invalid. Or for a specific technology in the industry, it is possible to file a patent invalidation procedure when it is considered that the patent has created an unfair monopoly.

In the procedure of patent invalidation request, the search of patent information is mainly through searching patent literature and non-patent literature to find the destruction of the novelty and creativity of the granted patent, searching the documents that contradict the application, and searching the documents that lead to repeated authorization.

(5) Search by the patentee

For enterprises, the business market is like a battlefield, and it is particularly important to pay attention to competitors. Monitoring competitors, searching their patent holdings or patent applications, you can understand the competitors' research and development strength and the latest research and development trends, and make timely plans to deal with competitors.

Before starting the patent search of competitors, it is necessary to investigate all branches of competitors and acquired enterprises to ensure that the investigation is comprehensive and complete. After you have mastered all the enterprises and branches owned by your competitors, you can start to analyze your competitors.

(6) Subject-specific patent monitoring

Patent monitoring is mainly to monitor and analyze the patent situation and patent literature in the field of technology and products to master the relevant technologies of competitors and learn more market information. By monitoring the relevant patents on the industry topics they focus on, they can track the technology dynamics of the industry. The principle of tracking is to conduct regular patent searches on the subject.

Two ways to monitor:

1) Limit the disclosure time in advanced search according to the demand, and conduct manual search on the platform according to a certain frequency.

2) Patent monitoring with monitoring function

Using the monitoring function, enter the search type in the monitoring interface, and set the data conditions that need to be searched, and monitor related patents.

(7) Legal status search

Patent legal status search refers to the search of a patent or patent application in the current state, its main purpose is to know whether the patent application is authorized, whether the patent is valid and other information.

Because the introduction of technology involves the financial resources and technology of enterprises, it has a great impact on enterprises. Therefore, before introducing a patented technology, it is necessary to investigate the validity of the patent. Search to find out whether the patented technology is valid. Knowledge of the legal status of the introduction of patented technology can facilitate negotiations with the other party to introduce the most advanced technology at the lowest cost.

(8) Public knowledge and public patent search

Public patents refer to patents that are not protected by law in China for specific reasons and can be used free of charge in China. Including the invalid Chinese patent, the legal status is rejected, withdrawn, abandoned, regarded as withdrawn, invalid, and did not claim priority on the basis of the patent to file a later application or patent, has expired the priority period and has not entered China foreign patents. Developed countries regard invalid patents as valuable information and technology resources, fully tap the value of invalid patents, and then further innovation. According to Japanese estimates, through the introduction of foreign patents and the use of expired patents, Japan has mastered foreign advanced technology, saving about 2/3 of the time and 9/10 of the research and development cost. In short, the use of public knowledge and public patent technology is in line with the urgent requirements of enterprise innovation in our country.

Types of public technology

(1) Time-effective invalid patent

Time-invalid patents include two situations of losing patent right when the term of protection expires and when the term of protection has not expired.

(2) Regional invalid patents

Territoriality means that patent rights granted by a country can only be supported and protected in the areas governed by the laws of that country. No country has any obligation to protect foreign patent rights. Regional invalidation patent refers to foreign patented technical information that has not applied for patent protection in China. There is no restriction on the production and sale of the patented products within China or in other countries where the patented technology is not protected.

Patent information retrieval in competitor research

There is an old saying in China that "shopping malls are like battlefields", grasp the development of competitors' core technologies and market layout, and then dig out the competitors' long-term goals, current strategies and capabilities, you can see into the opportunities, occupy the market one step earlier, and make timely responses when threatened by competitors, which is the so-called "know yourself and know your competitors."

Before a competitor patent search can begin, the competitor's name and inventor need to be collected completely. If the competitor is an enterprise, it is necessary to collect its company name, abbreviation, original name, alias, former name, subsidiary, branch, holding company, chairman of the company or legal representative and other names completely, in particular, pay attention to the various ways of writing the foreign name of the competitor. After mastering all the enterprises and branches owned by the competitor, you can begin to analyze the patent of the competitor.

Basic retrieval procedure

1. Analyze your competitors

Collect the name of the competitor. If the competitor is an enterprise, collect the company name, abbreviation, original name, alias, former name, subsidiary, branch, holding company, chairman of the company or legal representative, etc. In particular, pay attention to the various ways of writing the foreign name of the competitor enterprise are collected completely; If the competitor is an individual, take care to collect the various translated and written forms of their name.

2. Determine the search elements

According to the name of the collected competitors, determine the search elements, the search time range, the search field, the search country or region.

3. Write a search formula

Write the search formula according to the search elements.

4. Select the retrieval system for retrieval

According to the need to choose the appropriate search system for patent search, it can be the national intellectual property official website or commercial database.

5.Optimize the search for supplementary search

According to the search results, extract new keywords or search elements such as IPC, optimize the search style, and conduct supplementary search.

6. Analyze the search results

Based on the analysis of the search results, a conclusion is drawn, and the corresponding coping strategies are found.

More intellectual property related issues, welcome your scan code consultation! Have questions must answer yo ~ Deep credible is willing to use professional and focus, to provide you with high-quality and efficient intellectual property agency services!

More information and services

The official subscription number of "Deep Trusted Intellectual Property Rights" on the code

More deeply trusted dynamic news, important data/reports, authorized cases, etc

Code on the concern [deep trusted intellectual property service platform] official service number