Documents published by national Patent Offices all over the world form a wide and valuable heritage of technical documentation of great significance for companies.
Consultation of such documents, for instance, makes it possible to establish in advance the novelty of an invention intended to be introduced on the market and keep our clients updated of the technological progress in their field of activity.
The main purposes for conducting a patent search are:
| 1 | to safeguard investments by avoiding development and patenting of principles already protected or known (conducting a preliminary search as soon as a new solution has been conceived often permits to avoid wasting energy in trying to define solutions that then reveal to be already known and at the same time it enables you to find the best solution, among the many already attempted, for obtaining improvements); |
| 2 | to follow competitors' progress (to verify periodically competitors' patenting activity for example permits to know where the market is heading and how technology is evolving in a certain field of activity); |
| 3 | to identify licensable technologies, i.e. patents for which a license can be requested (obtaining a license under a patent for a good solution already protected can be much more advantageous, even economically, than seeking new solutions that do not interfere with previous patents); |
| 4 | to avoid infringing others' patents (the knowledge of patents which are in force in the field of activity of your business enables you to reduce the risk of unintentionally infringing a patent of others); |
| 5 | to take quickly the appropriate measures in case of infringement (patents for which registration is sought may function as a form of advertisement enabling you to promptly recognise attempts on the part of others to copy your products, maybe trying to escape the scope of protection of your own patents). |
In brief, the main types of search, among the many available, are the following:
| By number | This search is limited to a specific patent registration or patent application number; this kind of search enables you to detect bibliographic and legal (status vitae) information with respect to one or more specifications for which at least a reference number is known. |
| By IPC Classification | This search is limited to one or more classes of the International Patent Classification (IPC); this kind of search enables you to detect published patent specifications, classified in the selected class(es) in the databases consulted; for instance, if you are interested in the field of "Vehicle brake control systems or parts thereof" the pertinent class will be B60T, which comprises inventions relating to this field. |
| By Subject | This is a patent search limited to a particular subject generally identified by selecting combinations of keywords and / or international classes; this kind of search enables you to detect, in the databases consulted, published specifications satisfying the selected criteria; for instance a selection based on the words "CORK" and "BOTTLE", combined with the IPC class = B65D [Containers in general, their accessories and closures], enables you to detect inventions relating to bottle closures made of cork. |
| By Name | This is a patent search limited to a specific name of applicant and / or inventor; this kind of search enables you to detect, in the databases consulted, published specifications having the selected name as applicant or inventor; for example, it is possible to find documents in which "MONTEDISON SPA" appears as applicant and "GIULIO NATTA" as inventor. |
| Competitive Intelligence | This is a patent search with investigation and / or statistical purposes with respect to competitors or to a particular technical field, in which numerous typical search keywords are used; this kind of search for instance enables you to trace the trend in research and development in a particular technical field or to follow the research and development strategies of one or more competitors. |
| Mixed | This is a patent search for specific purposes obtained from a combination of different criteria typical of other kinds of search; an example of mixed search can consist of a selection of documents in the name of a specific applicant related to a specific technical field and that were published in the last five years. |
| Customized | This is a patent search designed on the basis of clients' needs and it can consist of the consultation of databases, also other than patent databases, containing technical, scientific or business documentation. |
| Scientific | This is a patent search enabling you to detect documents, in particular other than patent specifications, on a specific technical-scientific subject; searches of this kind can be used to detect documents for example relating to the latest development of treatment of a certain disease or to the most recent results in a particular industrial field. |
