Prior art search-An essential step before filing patents
Prior art search is an essential step before filing patent application for inventions. It involves searching “prior art” which is similar or overlapping to the invention. “Prior art” can be any evidence of existence of a prior publication in the form of patent and non-patent disclosures. It can be anything related to the invention, which is in public domain such as published patent records, non-patent literature, technical publications, traditional knowledge, scientific articles, books, online publications, public demonstrations, inventions publicly used prior filing patent application, invention sold before filing patent application, even oral presentations.
Some important things to be kept in mind while finding prior art are, it should be easily accessible to a person skilled in the art. Also, the invention must exhibit inventive step such that, it is either technical advanced or economically beneficial or both which makes the invention non-obvious to a person skilled in the art.
How we conduct prior art search
Vicky Infotech has developed standard procedures for searching “prior art” involving our own methods of forming advanced search strings which not only retrieve “prior art” from patent databases but also from non-patent resources. A detailed blog post is available on this website about forming search strings. The Title of the blog post and the link are given below for your ready reference.
Mining IP: The Formula to Ignite the Innovative Mind
URL: https://www.vickyinfotech.com/mining-ip-the-formula-to-ignite-the-innovativemind
The reports not only share information on search strings but also feature mapping table which indicates the overlap of the “prior art” with the teachings of invention disclosed in invention disclosure form (IDF).
The prior art search reports also discuss observations made by the patent expert during searching and expert comments regarding patentability are provided to make sure that the inventor gets clear cut understanding about his invention and proceed further confidently whether to file application or not. This will ensure that his investment in R&D is properly recovered through commercialization of the invention.
At Vicky Infotech all the inventions connected to the realm of computer science are dealt with utmost care and expert analysis is carried out to suggest to the clients about building features in the inventions which can make them patentable. Off course we charge for such reports and for a few cases, go to the extent of helping our client in implementations at a very high level.