Prior art search: what is it and how to perform it?

“IP”h.D. - Intellectual Property fundamentals for Ph.D. Students

June 17, 2021

Massimo Barbieri

Politecnico di Milano
Technology Transfer Office
 Index

Introduction
Patent databases
Prior art searches
Classification symbols
Examples

Massimo Barbieri - 2021

 Why prior art searches are important!

To avoid «reinventing the wheel» (waste of R&D resources)

To avoid infringement of other companies’ patents

To write a better patent application

To speed up the prosecution of a patent

To find out the most recent inventions

To study the development of a particular technology

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 When do we perform prior art searches?

Filing

Before starting my research National filing PCT

(e.g. Master or PhD thesis)
Patent
publication
TTO
request

12 months 6
12 months
months

State of the Patentability Patentability Patentability Monitoring

art search search search search

The entire patent procedure

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 Index

Introduction
Patent databases
Prior art searches
Classification symbols
Examples

Massimo Barbieri - 2021

 Patent databases

Free of charge sources

ü (provided by national or regional patent offices)
Espacenet, Patentscope

ü (provided by independent producers)

GOOGLE PATENTS, Free Patents Online

Professional sources
ü Derwent Innovation, Orbit Intelligence,
Patbase

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 Patent databases

- Coverage [Countries (EP, US, CN) and number of docs]

- Search engine
- different results obtained

Search for «graphene» in the abstract field

Database Results
Espacenet 64,453
Patentscope 72,315

Use more than one patent database

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 Index

Introduction
Patent databases
Prior art searches
Classification symbols
Examples

Massimo Barbieri - 2021

 Types of prior art searches (1)

Informative (or “quick” or state of the art): informative search for R&D
planning, technological trends analysis, competitors‘ monitoring (IPC +
KW)

Patentability search (novelty): the purpose is to determine whether an

invention is novel and potentially patentable

Validity (or opposition) search: a patentability search carried out to

determine if a granted patent is indeed valid

Freedom to operate search: the purpose is to determine if a product is

marketable without infringing third parties rights

Legal status: the objective is to know if a patent is still alive or expired

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 Patent searching: how to do it? (1)

Scope of patent searches: to find out documents that claim similar

technical features and not a mere match of words.
A patent search may be carried out:
by keywords (intuitive but subjective)
by classification codes Language-independent
search tools
by citations

Operators:
Boolean (AND, OR, NOT)
proximity
Language used: English

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 Patent searching: how to do it? (2)

Example: protective masks (useful for pandemics)

TI: protective mask à 2,507 results

TI or AB: protective mask à 11,382 results

Use classification
IPC: A41D 13/11 à 19,886 results codes

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 Classification searches (nanotechnology)

A KW search is worthless to search for nanotechnology-related patents

No. of subgroups
IPC CPC
B82B 2 27
B82Y 9 9

CPC vs. IPC (Espacenet)

120000
B82Y; 100030
100000
ipc=B82Y NOT (cpc=A OR
80000 72617 cpc=B OR cpc=C OR cpc=D
60000 OR cpc=E OR cpc=F OR
40000
cpc=G OR cpc=H)
26309
20000
B82B; 4765
0
B82B B82Y 18.762 documents don’t
CPC IPC have any CPC symbol

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 Classification searches (nanotechnology)

IPC (Patentscope)
90000
79635
80000

70000

60000

50000

40000
29274
30000

20000

10000

0
B82B B82Y

Use both classification systems

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 Patent searching: how to do it? (2)
The important things to remember are:

1. Analysis of the information received about the invention (identify the

essential features)
2. Identification of the most suitable databases for finding the prior art
3. Planning of a search strategy (how to select and combine KWs and classes)
4. Evaluation of the retrieved documents

Some useful tips:

• Search in the title + abstract + claims (rather than in the full text), using
precise KWs and classes [start small, expand carefully]
• Avoid long search queries, don’t combine all aspects in one query
• Aim for small result sets (50 records) and then expand the search
• If you find a very relevant document, do forward and backward citation
searches immediately (make use of the expertise of patent examiners!)

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 Patent searching: how to do it? (3)

Invention with 3 essential features (EF)

EF1 KW1EF1 KW2EF1 CEF1

EF2 KW1EF2 KW2EF2 CEF2
EF3 KW1EF3 KW2EF3 CEF3

EF1 = KW1EF1 OR KW2EF1 OR CEF1

EF2 = KW1EF2 OR KW2EF2 OR CEF2
EF3 = KW1EF3 OR KW2EF3 OR CEF3

Possible queries:

EF1 AND EF2

EF1 AND EF3
EF2 AND EF3
Drawbacks:
- the number of hits is too large to be able to review them all
- the sets of KWs are supposed to be complete
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 Example

4D printing

“4D printing is the process through which a 3D printed object

transforms itself into another structure over the influence of
external energy input as temperature, light or other environmental
stimuli”
1. 4D printing concept: AM classification codes

Classification codes Definition

B33Y Additive manufacturing
B29C 64 Processes of additive manufacturing
B22F 10/10 Additive manufacturing from metallic powder – Formation of a
green body
B22F 10/20 Additive manufacturing from metallic powder – Direct sintering or
melting

2. 4th dimension concept: (4_D print+) OR (shape W memory) OR

programmable OR (self W healing) OR (self W assembl+) OR (four W
dimensional)
3. Materials concept: (metal? OR polymer+ OR ceram+ OR hydrogel?
OR ionomer? OR vitrimer? OR alloy?)
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 Example

Results

No. of results Search query

413.771 ((4_D PRINT+) OR (SHAPE W MEMORY) OR PROGRAMMABLE OR (SELF W
HEALING) OR (SELF W ASSEMBL+) OR (four W
dimensional)/TI/AB/CLMS/ICLM
8.567.756 ((METAL? OR POLYMER+ OR CERAM+ OR HYDROGEL? OR IONOMER? OR
VITRIMER? OR ALLOY?))/TI/AB/CLMS/ICLM
65.006 (B33Y+ OR B29C64+ OR B22F10/10 OR B22F10/12)/IPC/CPC
542 1 AND 2 AND 3

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 Patent searching: how to do it? (4)

Why is better to start precise and expand later:

1. To avoid noisy result sets

2. To assess the usefulness of each search query

3. To reduce the risk of discarding relevant documents

4. This approach may help to decide when to stop the search: that is

when the next queries give so much noise that it is not worthwhile

to continue

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 Index

Introduction
Patent databases
Prior art searches
Classification symbols
Examples

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Classification is a system of sorting inventions and their patent documents
into technical fields covering all areas of technology. Every patent document
is given a classification symbol by the examiner.

Patent offices developed classification systems in the 19th century in order

to cope with the growing volume of patents and non-patent literature.

The most used patent classifications today are the IPC and the CPC.

The IPC is a hierarchical classification systems. The top level consists of 8

sections (A – H) which are divided into 76,000 subdivisions called classes,
subclasses, groups and subgroups.

The CPC is an enhanced version of the IPC, uses the same structure as the
IPC but with more subdivisions.

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The IPC is updated every year on 1 January

After each update, all patent documents are reclassified

CPC is used by EPO and USPTO and a few other national offices

When the CPC changes , all patent documents are also reclassified (there is
only one single version of the CPC: the one currently in effect)

It is estimated that 90% of the documents requiring a CPC classification will

receive one within eight months after publication

Since CPC is available a few months after the publication date, you should not
search with CPC symbols if you are targeting recently published documents

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 Patent classification

Classification system No. of subgroups

IPC 76,000

CPC 250,000

FI (File Index) 190,000

F-terms 350,000

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 Structure of IPC codes

Graphene is a carbon allotrope (C01B32), which is a non-metallic element (C01B),

formally classified in inorganic chemistry (C01).

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 How to retrieve IPC codes

https://www.wipo.int/classifications/ipc/ipcpub/

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 How to retrieve IPC codes

A surgical instrument and a method for geometrical evaluation of

an object inside a body of a human being or animal is described.
The instrument comprises a handle, a reference device and
means for bringing said reference device into the vicinity of said
object, said instrument co-operating with an image acquisition
device for acquiring at least one image of said reference device
when it is in the vicinity of said object. Typically, the object is a
lesion of an internal tissue, for example a cartilage tissue of an
articulation of the knee.

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 How to retrieve IPC codes

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 CPC codes

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 CPC codes

pn=US5645599A https://worldwide.espacenet.com

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 Hierarchy

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 Rules

ü The claimed invention will only classified at the lowest

level of the classification hierarchy which describes
best the underlying technology (“last place rule”)

ü A classification symbol is not cumulative, which means

that the set of patents which is classified at a higher
level of hierarchy does not include patents which are
classified at a lower hierarchical level

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 Example

A patent application claiming a mixture of carbon

nanotubes and graphene

Use classification codes at a main group or subclass level

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 Index

Introduction
Patent databases
Prior art searches
Classification symbols
Examples

Massimo Barbieri - 2021

http://worldwide.espacenet.com Espacenet

The user interface is available in the 3 official EPO languages

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 Espacenet

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 Truncation symbols

To extend a search, truncation symbols (wildcards) can be used to

include, for example, the plural form of a word, or alternative spellings.
There are three different wildcard characters available in Espacenet:

* stands for a string of characters of any length

? stands for zero or one character
# stands for exactly one character
Example: to find the word
car or cars type car? in the title field
polymerization or polymerization polymeri#ation
polymeric, polymer, polymerization, to polymeriz polymer*

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 Espacenet

• the number of displayed documents is limited to 500;

• the maximum number of search terms per field is ten;
• a maximum of 20 search terms and 19 operators per query
can be used;
• The search languages are English, French and German;
•Full text search is available in “Worldwide collection of
published applications” (in English, French and German);
• IPC and CPC are the only supported classification systems;
• XP documents cannot be searched

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 Exercise

ü Find applications filed by Biontech published in the

year 2020, where the word RNA appears in the title,
using Espacenet
ü Find patent application no. US2020282046A1
Ø Who is the applicant?
Ø Is it granted?

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 Example 1

ü A device used for inhibiting the automatic opening of

cars’ door
ü a sensor warns drivers not to open a door if
someone or something is approaching from the rear
or on one side

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 Example 1

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 Example 1

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 Example 1

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 Example 1

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 Example 2

Credit: H. Wongel [Cooperative Patent

Classification (CPC) Roma, 8 luglio 2014]

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 Example 2

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 Example 2

1. Concept of locating an object: CPC [A63B 2024/0053]

2. Concept of golf ball: CPC [A63B37/0003] and [golf
ball*]
3. Concept of RFID: CPC [A63B 2225/54] or RFID [add
the concept of golf ball]

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 Example 2

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 Example 2

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 Example 2

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 Summarizing

Start small, expand carefully

Start using very specific words in title and abstract

Expand the search using synonyms and classes to increase recall

Use the full text to complete the search

Analyze the drawings, title, abstract and then claims and full text

When you find a relevant patent, search for cited and citing documents

Search on more than one database

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Massimo Barbieri - 2021