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With the increasingly fierce competition in the global market, the use of patent information has become the golden key to the development of enterprises. If you want to fully grasp patent information, you must skillfully use various means of patent search. Common types of patent search mainly include: Patentability search Infringement search technology subject search patent legal status search patent family search

Patentability search

 Patentability search is a search to judge whether an invention has novelty and creativity. By finding out the most relevant comparative literature of invention-creation from the prior art literature, and evaluating the invention-creation according to the judgment criteria of novelty and creativity, the conclusion of patentability is drawn. Patentability search is often used to evaluate technology before patent application or technology trade, and to predict whether research and development before project approval has the prospect of obtaining intellectual property protection.

Novelty search refers to the search of various public publications around the world, including patent literature, from the subject of the invention to determine whether the invention is novel, with the purpose of finding out the literature that can be compared with novelty.

Creative search refers to the search of various public publications around the world, including patent documents, from the subject of the invention to determine whether the invention is creative, with the purpose of finding documents that can be compared creatively. Creative search is carried out on the basis of novelty search, only when there is no literature that breaks novelty in novelty search, it will continue to carry out creative search, and combine several of the closest comparative documents to make creative comparison.

The scope of patentability search is a variety of public publications at home and abroad, and the search results require precision. In terms of the selection of search systems, the national Intellectual property offices of various countries and some international patent organizations generally provide free search systems. For example, the websites of the State Intellectual Property Office of China, the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the European Patent Office, the Japanese Patent Office, the Korean Patent Office, the United Kingdom Patent Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, the German Patent and Trademark Office, the Australian Intellectual Property Office, and the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) all provide search systems. In addition to the search systems provided by the patent departments of these countries and regions, some database service providers also provide their own search systems. In order to ensure the recall rate and accuracy rate of patent documents, the search personnel should give priority to a professional and highly integrated patent search system for patent search. At present, the main integrated patent search systems are: Derwent Innovation Index Database (DII), which integrates the Derwent World Patent Index (DWPI) and Patent Citation Index (PCI) records, covering 90% of the world's national patents. TotalPatent Patent database, including original patent documents, titles and abstracts from 99 countries around the world for machine translation and easy retrieval. IncoPat Technology Innovation intelligence platform, including more than 100 million patent data from 102 countries around the world. These highly integrated commercial patent databases are a powerful tool for finding patent information worldwide.

The general steps of patentability search are:

(1) Search all public publications on a global scale, determine the degree of relevance to the subject of search by reading patent titles and abstracts, and find similar literature on invention and creation technology. For closely related patent literature, read the full text of the patent.

(2) The comparative patents after screening are compared with the technical points of novelty search. Determine whether the comparative literature can affect the novelty of the new search technology. If not, the creativity of the new search technology should be searched.

For the analysis part of the new search results of patent search, the correlation of literature can be compared by referring to the search reports of the World Patent Cooperation Treaty Organization (PCT) and the European Patent Office (EPO) and the search reports issued by the professionals of the State Intellectual Property Office. The symbol of the correlation of patent comparison literature can be used for reference in the part of literature comparison analysis, X: Documents that affect the novelty of the claim alone, Y: documents that affect the creativity of the claim when combined with other category Y documents in the search report; A: Background technical documents, that is, documents that reflect part of the technical features of the claims or part of the prior art; E: Conflicting application documents that separately affect the novelty of the claim.

Infringement search

I. Overview of infringement search

Enterprise

    Infringement search includes prevention of infringement search and passive infringement search. Infringement prevention search refers to the active search of a new technology or new product in order to avoid patent disputes, and its purpose is to find out the patent that may be infringed by it; Passive infringement search refers to the patent search conducted when the patent is accused of infringement, the purpose of which is to find out the basis for invalidation action against the infringed patent.

II. infringement search

1. Search for literature types

From the search literature type. The types of documents searched for protection against infringement include invention, utility model or design patents from countries around the world and from WIPO. As far as the search tools are concerned, they include: regular patent bulletins and indexes published by patent organizations and national patent offices, patent bulletins and indexes published by patent organizations and national patent offices, databases on the websites of patent organizations and national patent offices, and commercial comprehensive patent databases (including CD-ROM, online and online versions). There is no comprehensive patent index tool for design patents, which mainly relies on national Internet databases established by patent offices around the world and published appearance bulletins.

The types of literature for passive infringement searches include various publications. A publication in the sense of a patent is an independent communication vehicle that records the technical or design content, and should indicate or have other evidence to prove the time of its public publication or publication. Publications in accordance with the above meaning may be printed or typed paper of all kinds, such as patent documents, scientific and technical magazines, technical manuals, officially published conference minutes or technical reports, newspapers, product samples, product catalogues, advertising brochures, etc., or audiovisual materials made by means of electricity, light, magnetism, photography, etc. For example, microfilm, film, photographic film, videotape, tape, record, compact disc, etc., can also be the Internet or other online database in the form of files. Publications printed with the words "internal information", "internal distribution", etc., are indeed issued within a specific scope and require confidentiality, and are not public publications. The date of printing of a publication is deemed to be the date of publication, unless there is other evidence to prove the date of publication.

2. Expression of search results

There are also differences in the expression of search results between prevention of infringement search and passive infringement search. The patent documents closely related to the subject of the search technology are found in the search literature, and the basic information of the patent documents is listed, including title, abstract, application number, patent number, public date, patentee, and protection period. In passive infringement search, the search results should list the comparative documents to determine whether the patent or patent application is novel or creative.

3. Infringement judgment

In terms of infringement judgment. Infringement prevention search is to analyze and compare the infringing product or technology key points (solutions) with the retrieved risk patents, and suggest the possible risk of patent infringement according to the judgment principles of invention patent, utility model patent and appearance patent infringement. For the patent documents that the product may infringe, it is necessary to further search the legal status of the patent documents. The passive infringement search is mainly to see whether the patent document is valid, whether the patent right is terminated, and whether the patent right is in the effective protection area. For a patent that is legally valid, it should be determined whether there are grounds for invalidation. If it does not meet the reasons for invalidity stipulated in the Patent Law, it should look at whether there is any literature affecting the novelty and creativity of the infringing patent and give a judgment opinion on whether it is patentable.

Infringement prevention search refers to the search of patent information before a new industrial production activity (production, sales of new products, application of new technologies, etc.) 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 potential infringement risks in the target market, analyze the infringement status of these patents, and propose avoidance strategies for high-risk patents.

Passive infringement retrieval is to determine whether the infringement is established and the scope of infringement when the enterprise is accused of infringement or accuses others of infringement, and suggest the customer to take corresponding measures according to the analysis results.

4. Infringement search steps

(1) anti-infringement search

The largest range of technical subject searches

All patents related to the technical subject matter (subject to complete search) are retrieved.

The main search methods are: subject word/classification number, patent related person (applicant/inventor), date, specific patent number search, etc.

Manual screening of comparative claims

Identify similar or similar patents based on novelty and creativity criteria.

Infringement analysis of highly associated patents

For patents that are at risk of infringement, the patent family search should be conducted to find out the patent family that is similar or close to the patent.

On this basis, the legal status search is carried out to determine the legal status of similar or similar patents and their congeners.

Through citation search, the scope of search is extended and the legal state of patent is clarified.

Infringement analysis

Analyze the infringement of high risk patents whose legal status is currently in effect.

The patent application scheme is given

(2) Passive infringement search

Determine whether it is an authorized patent or a valid patent, if it is not authorized or has expired, then terminate the search, otherwise proceed to the next step

Analyze whether it is an infringement, read the claims of the patent specification retrieved, compare and analyze the technical characteristics of the product or method accused of infringement, and determine whether it is an infringement. If there is no infringement, terminate the search, otherwise proceed to the next step

The specific retrieval method is the same as that of novelty and patent. 

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 scientific and technological innovation, it is necessary to carry out technical topic search for the subject to be developed, and retrieve all the relevant technical literature and patent data of the technical topic involved.

Patent legal status search

I. What is the legal status of patents

Legal status refers to the type of rights, maintenance of rights, scope of rights, ownership of rights, etc. of a patent application or authorized patent in a certain country at a certain point in time, which will directly affect the existence of patent rights and the size of the scope of patent rights. The legal status of patent generally includes four aspects from the perspective of time and space: territory, time, ownership and scope of protection.

The region mainly refers to: a patented technology is mainly applied for patents in which countries, in which countries, did not apply for patents, and may be in which countries for patent protection in the future. From the perspective of time, it refers to: what is the protection period of a certain technology in the country, whether it has entered the protection period, and how long is the remaining protection time. The ownership of patent rights mainly refers to whether the patent rights of a certain technology have been transferred, who is the current patentee, and who is the actual owner of the patent. The scope of patent protection mainly refers to whether there is a follow-up procedure after the patent is granted and whether the scope of patent protection has changed.

Patent legal status search refers to the search of the current legal status of a patent or patent application, its purpose is to understand whether the patent application is authorized, whether the patent is valid after the grant, whether the patentee has changed, and other information related to the legal status of the patent.

Common types of legal status search mainly include: the validity of patent rights, the expiration of the patent term, the patent application has not been authorized, the patent application has been withdrawn or regarded as withdrawn, the patent application has been rejected, the patent right has been terminated, the patent right is invalid or partially invalid, and the patent right has been transferred.

Among them, patent validity refers to the patent obtained on or before the search date, and is still in force. In order for a patent to remain valid, the patent must not only be within the legal period of protection, but the patentee must also pay the annual fee on time as required.

Expiration of the term of validity of a patent means that on or before the date of search, the patent to be searched has been granted the patent right, but the term of validity of the patent right on or before the date of search has exceeded the term prescribed in the Patent Law.

A patent application not yet authorized means that on or before the date of search, the patent application being searched has not been published or has been published but has not yet been granted the patent right, and this legal state is called patent application not yet authorized.

Withdrawal or deemed withdrawal of a patent application means that, on or before the date of search, the respondent of the searched patent actively withdraws or is judged to be withdrawn by the Patent Office.

Rejection of a patent application means that on or before the date of search, the searched patent application is rejected by the patent adjudication authority.

Termination of patent right means that the patent being searched has been patented on or before the date of search, but it is invalid before the expiration of the patent term because it has not paid the annual patent fee.

Invalid or partially invalid patent right means that, on or before the date of search, the patent right searched has been patented, but because the reasons for invalidation are established, the patent right is determined to be invalid by the Patent Office.

The transfer of patent rights refers to the change of the patentee or patent applicant in the searched patent or patent application on or before the date of search.

The application scope of patent legal status search mainly includes: technology introduction, product export, patent early warning, infringement litigation, market supervision and review opinion reference.

What is peer patent search

I. What is Homogeneous patent

People refer to at least one group of Patent documents with the same priority, multiple applications, multiple announcements or approvals in different countries or international patent organizations as the same or basically the same content, called Patent Family. Each Patent document in the same patent Family is called a patent family member, and the patent documents in the same patent family are Members of each other.

Ii. Types of family patents

The types of patent family include: simple patent family, complex patent family, extended patent family, domestic patent family, internal patent family and artificial patent family.

Simple patent family: A patent family in which all members of the same patent family share one or several priorities is a simple patent family.

Complex patent family: A patent family in which all members of the same patent family have priority on at least one common patent application is a complex patent family.

Extended patent family: In the same patent family, each member of the patent family and at least one other member of the patent family in the group at least one patent application for priority, they constitute the extended patent family.

Domestic patent family: In the same patent family, each member of the patent family is the patent document of the same industrial property right, which belongs to the supplementary patent of the same original application, continued application, partial continued application, subcase application, etc., but does not include the patent document published at different approval stages of the same patent application.

Internal patent family: A patent family consisting of a group of patent documents published by an industrial property office in different approval procedures for the same original application.

Artificial patent family: Also known as intelligent patent family, unconventional patent family, that is, the content of the same or basically the same, through artificial classification composed of patent documents published by different industrial property offices, but in fact there is no priority link between these patent documents. Such a patent family is called an artificial patent family.

Source: Zhi Nan Needle

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