Patent Searches

A patentability search or novelty search is conducted to evaluate the patentability of an invention based on the statutory requirements of a patent office. The searches are conducted prior to preparing the patent application to determine whether the invention is novel and non-obvious. The objective of the search is to identify prior art relevant to the novelty of the invention in patent and non-patent literature.

We have access to industry’s leading patent and non-patent databases across 100+ jurisdictions worldwide.

An accelerated examination search (AES) requires comprehensive prior art search of US patents, published patents, and non-patent literature. It requires an applicant to submit a pre-examination report along with the patent application in order to receive the examiner’s final decision within 12 months.

We prepare AES report as per the guidelines defined by USPTO to ensure a fast response from the examiner in prosecuting your patent application. The search helps you to save costs and time for obtaining a patent.

The search focuses on novel ornamental aspects of the overall design. Since the design is apparent in appearance, the subject patent may relate to shape, structure, outline or configuration. A design search protects only the appearance of the article and not structural or utility features. The design protected in the patent needs to be non-obvious with respect to the existing prior-art for the patent to be granted.

The validity search is performed by assignee/plaintiff after the grant of a patent to ensure that the patent granted is valid and enforceable whereas an invalidity search is conducted by a defendant to invalidate a patent by conducting prior art search. The key objective of the validity and invalidity search is to unearth prior art that was likely missed by the patent examiner during the prosecution stage, which may potentially question the novelty or non-obviousness of the reference. An invalidity/validity search involves conducting a thorough patent and non-patent literature search to identify prior art references predating the earliest filing of the patent.

Before launching a product or service in the market, it is important to conduct a freedom to operate (FTO) or clearance search. In order to assess the risk of potential infringement and avoid subsequent litigation, the organization should proactively perform a FTO search to identify any patents that may potentially map to the features of the product or service to be launched.Generally, the FTO search is restricted to a particular jurisdiction, however, it is prudent to search for international applications which can potentially enter the target jurisdictions in order to be absolutely sure of obtaining a patent. An FTO search involves a claim specific search to locate claims that read on the features of the product or service to be launched in the market.

The availability of patent and non-patent literature from Asian countries in English language is limited. Such Asian countries as China, Japan, and Korea are considered as the hubs of innovation and have witnessed a lot of patent filing activity in the recent years. Many of the patent and non-patent documents originating from these jurisdictions do not have English language translations or counterpart(s). For an effective patent search, it is essential to cover prior art documents (patent & non-patent) from these jurisdictions.

Patent landscape is an exhaustive search of patents that belong to a particular technology domain. The classification of patents in a specified order enables clear understanding of the domain not only from the technical side, but also from a business standpoint.

State of the art search is performed to foresight a comprehensive picture of a particular technology area. Such searches help you to map latest development in the specific technology, and make strategic business decisions.

With the rapid growth in biotechnology space, organizations are filing patents at a faster clip than ever before. Bio-sequence searches involves finding a specific arrangement of sequences in the patent or non-patent document. Bio-Sequence search helps the inventor to ascertain whether the sequence is novel. Since the novelty of the sequence lies in the unique combination of nucleotides or amino acids, a keyword-based search alone cannot capture the entire data-set including all the relevant results. Even if the desired sequence has a similar name, all patents would not include the name, and thus a number of such results may be missed during the keyword-based search.

Chemical structure searches involve finding a specific spatial arrangement of molecules in the patent or non-patent document. Our team of pharmaceutical experts and chemical engineers assist you in determining the novelty and validity of a claim in a chemical structure by conducting searches in subscribed patent databases. We perform in-depth analysis of the structures to identify similar compounds. Depending on the type of the structure and database, structure searching is supplemented by other strategies such as IUPAC/Common name search, CAS number search to overcome the inherent limitations of the database and ensure best quality results.

Some of the key tools used for structure searching are Scientific Technical Networks (STN), which is a network of more than 200 databases, Chemspider, etc.