HKSTP Seminar on Practical Patent Searching Skills

HKSTP organized a seminar named “Practical Patent Searching Skills” on 11 July 2017.  Mr. Zephyr Su (Associate, Chinese Patent Attorney, Marks&Clerk) was the guest speaker and he introduced how businesses could utilize patent searches.  He pointed out patent search could help you to understand the following items:

-          What is the cutting-edge technology trend

-          Blue ocean or red ocean

-          Patent strongholds built by your competitors / partners

-          Any threat to your business

Two purposes for patent search were “Validity” and “Freedom-to-operate”.  Validity is indicated that your idea is new and bright.  Freedom-to-operate ensured your product could sale without threat. 

Then Mr. Su briefed the real world scenario with patent search through four steps.  There were Product Design, 1^st Patent Search (stopping you), 2^nd Patent Search (competitor) and 3^rd Patent Search (Other people’s patent).  However, patent search had its limitations included “Not all knowledges were written in the form of patents”, “most patent applications were published after 18 months”, “Submarine patent”, “using rare and obscure words, language barriers”, etc.

Mr. Su also introduced some typical search platforms to us.

The patent sample was showed.  The format included Title, Inventor, Applicant, App Number, App Date, IPC, Patent number, Cross-reference and Abstract.  It is important that the patent owned by Applicant (could be company).  Inventor only named who is the idea generated but not necessary owned the patent.  

IPC states for International Patent Classification and it could use for searching more specific and the code C 07 C 35/12 mean Section, Class, Subclass, Group and Subgroup.  Moreover operators in search included AND, OR, NOT, NEAR, SAME and AJD.  

After that Mr. Su told us the search results should not be too few or too many. The search criteria needed to be adjusted.  The he demonstrated how a patent examiner conducted the search and following the following steps.

1.      Understand and recognition

2.      Decision of search scope

3.      Decision of database

4.      Decision of search formula

5.      Screening of search results

Finally, Mr. Su introduced some free patent search website for our use and practice.

Reference:

HKSTP - http://www.hkstp.org

Previous Patent Related Seminar in HKSTP:

20150320: HKSTP IP Seminar – Win the Patent Game - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.hk/2015/03/hkstp-ip-seminar-win-patent-game.html

20150321: HKSTP Seminar – Developing Software and Apps Making People WOW - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.hk/2015/03/hkstp-seminar-developing-software-and.html

20140715: HKSTP Seminar on IP Strategy for Start-Ups - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.hk/2014/07/hkstp-seminar-on-ip-strategy-for-start.html

20100507: Biotech Seminar: Aligning IP with the Growth of a Biopharmaceutical Company - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.hk/2010/05/biotech-seminar-aligning-ip-with-growth.html

20090822: Innovation – From Art to Science - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.hk/2009/08/innovation-from-art-to-science.html