How to create a Patentability Search Strategy

Patentability Search is also known as Prior Art Search or Novelty Search. The purpose of this article is to show How to create a Patentability Search Strategy that includes from Identifying Patent Classifications to developing a patentability search and more…

How to create a Patentability Search Strategy

Creating a Patentability Search Strategy

Let us take an example of an invention in the domain of Electronics, Telecommunication, and Business Method, for which a patentability assessment has to be carried out, which means identifying any document where the novel and inventive aspects of the invention are covered. It is important to understand that for patentability, the document recovered must be specific and narrow in terms of matching of the invention aspects and matching information in the document identified as relevant.

In the first example, we will also give step by step comments and indicators related to the creation of search strings.

Understanding the Invention

A device for

  • Reading or swiping a payment card (such as debit card or credit card) via magnetic stripe or chip using the ‘card present methodology’
  • Attaching or connecting to a mobile telephone which has internet connectivity using a TRS (tip, ring, sleeve) connector or a Universal Serial Bus (USB)
  • Verifying or authenticating the payment card information through internet connectivity enabled in mobile telephone
  • Allowing the user to enter debit card or credit card information without it being stored in the system and
  • Allowing a transaction to be executed if the authentication and verification is done at the host server’s end

Creating the Invention Statement and Generating Keywords

If the invention were to be put down in a single statement in the form of an invention statement, it could be:

A device for allowing swiping of a credit card and connect it to a mobile phone for processing a transaction using internet connection on the mobile phone.

It can be noted that aspects such as type of connector; verifying, or authenticating the payment card information; have not been included in the invention as they do not seem to be the essential aspects of the invention. Once the searcher identifies a document with information matching the invention statement, then the additional aspects of the invention can be looked up in the identified document.

Accordingly, the key aspects and additional aspects of the invention shall be used to formulate the search strategy.

Developing the Patentability Search Strategy

For this example, an alternative approach to searching is considered where the search strategy is an indicative and exemplary approach to the study which involves a series of search strings. It can be observed that certain iterative searches are carried out to broaden and narrow the search strings using operators and variation of search fields. Classification based searches are incorporated to provide robustness to the searches.

PatSeer has also helped many Intellectual property professionals to built a sound strategy with the help of various PatSeer edition.

To know more about the Patentability Search strategy visit : https://patseer.com/2021/01/patentability-search-strategy/