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Patentability and State-of-the-Art Searching Training Course
A comprehensive and practical two-day seminar covering the key aspects of patentability and state-of-the-art searching.
Details
Course overview
The world of patents and state-of-the-art searching can be a minefield if you’re not fully up to date with latest practices and technologies. This practical course will take you through the processes of defining, instigating and completing a state-of-the-art search in relation to patents.
From understanding the range of databases available, choosing a data collection and defining your search scope, right through to completing the search and evaluating the results, the expert trainers will give you all the insights you need to avoid costly pitfalls. They will make sure you are up to date with new technologies and offer guidance on monitoring patent families. This is a must-attend, value-rich event for all those involved in state-of-the-art searching.
Who should attend?
- All those working in IP or patent information or patent engineer roles either in industry or legal businesses, including:
- IP managers
- Patent research specialists and analysts
- Patent attorneys
- R&D scientists and engineers wanting to ensure they are not ‘re-inventing the wheel’
- Customer service and training representatives in the commercial information provider community who want to know more about what their customers do with patent data
- All those wanting to consolidate and enhance their skills in searching
Programme
Introduction to searching in the patent literature
- Searching – process overview
- The basics of information retrieval
- The three elements of any search
- Data quality
- Technical steps – precision and recall in practice
- Human skills
- How patents differ from other technical documents
Choosing a data collection and understanding the range of databases available
- The impact of search engine or vendor choice
- Forms of database and the implications for searching
- The responsibility and skills of the searcher
- Pre-search briefing and post-search reporting – communication aspects
Background and motivations to patentability searching: extent, timing, caveats
- Understanding the background to a search
- Novelty or patentability?
- Approaches to the search – source-based, concept-based
- Using secondary and tertiary literature sources
- Pre-search preparation and maximising efficiency
- Common pitfalls and how to avoid them
Fundamentals of the search scope
- Defining a search for universal novelty
- Searching for (lack of) inventive step
- Some differences in US practice
- Overall search protocols – narrowing or widening the scope
- Methods for searching by subject: text, classifications, citations and text-mining
- Approaches to multilingual sources: document translation, query translation and abstraction
Background and definition of state-of-the-art searching
- The differences between state of the art, patentability and landscaping
- Scoping the request for technology or state-of-the-art analysis
- Search considerations and planning
- Setting up alerts for monitoring state of the art
- Reviewing, iterating, relevancy and categorisation
Practical workshop
- Analysing and reporting your results
- Keep up to date with state of the art: monitoring new technologies and patent families
Evaluating search results against the search definition
- Search iterations
- Indirect methods for identifying additional prior art: inventor/assignee, technical equivalents
- Special aspects of searches in different technical fields: chemical, electrical, mechanical
- Specialist tools in chemistry and life sciences
Overview of distinctions between patentability and validity searching
- Objectives and outcomes of a validity search
- Implications for liability
- Validity challenges
- Sources for file histories
- Guidelines for search: reactions, mixtures and formulations
Book now
Book or reserve now
We do not currently have dates confirmed for this course; please contact us to be informed when it is scheduled; or to discuss running this course on an in-house basis for your staff.